


a history of patience and other necessary evils

by oh_simone



Series: girl, unobserved [1]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Action, Emotional Constipation, F/M, Future Fic, Genderswap, Intrigue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-13
Updated: 2013-09-13
Packaged: 2017-12-26 10:56:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/965123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_simone/pseuds/oh_simone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Diamonds, murders, and ten years of pining collide all at once for Yamamoto Takako.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a history of patience and other necessary evils

**Author's Note:**

> I've finally sat down to re-edit and post this oldie. Thanks again, to Minty and Rinja and Zippy, who were the original readers for this. As this was written prior to the end of the series, it may not be totally canon-compliant.  
> Originally posted January 26, 2011.

_“I try out a smile, and I aim it at you  
you must have missed it; you always do”_  
-Ellie Goulding, “The Writer”  
  
  
Felice Fiori isn’t mafia, but he has ties sunk deep into the illegal arms and diamond business in Zimbabwe, which he’s been trying to run through Vongola stakes in Libya. He’s also married to Juliette Benoit-Corbone, heiress of the celebrated French Connection legacy, and supposedly still very much affiliated with the Corsican mafia, though no one could ever prove it.  
  
The Vongola has been trying for months to find a polite but firm way of saying “we won’t interfere, but please don’t involve us with any illegally mined jewels.” That is, diamonds are pretty and all, but Yamamoto’s seen _Blood Diamond_. She knows that stuff is messed up. This is the first time in four months of negotiation that all parties have actually agreed on in-person discussion, and though Yamamoto thinks that it took long enough and is about time all this back-and-forthing was resolved, Gokudera has assured her that the real work has only just begun. She’s inclined to believe him, since he’s been the one doing all the talking in the past four days; she’s just been standing at the door, smiling brightly and holding a really big sword.  
  
Outside, the Tuscan sunset is nothing short of spectacular; the location they’ve chosen to meet in is a neat villa about an hour out of Siena. As far as Yamamoto can see are olive trees and vineyards, dusky purple in the fading daylight. Rolling hills and dark mountains are hazy and gray in the distance. She’s had the balcony windows open since noon; it’s beautifully warm and breezy in the country, and she adores the way the sunlight makes everything smell. Gokudera may mutter dark and suspicious things about assassins or spies being practically invited into her bedroom, but she just laughs because they both know she’s more than capable of dealing with any physical threats, probably better than he. It’s the last night they have here; tomorrow Gokudera’s wrapping up the talks and they’re headed out to the Vongola estate up north for debriefing.  
  
There’s a knock on the door, and Yamamoto turns around as Gokudera lets himself in after half a second; he glances up briefly from his papers when the wind rustles them and scowls from behind his glasses as he spots her leaning against the worn granite balustrade.  
  
“Inside, Yamamoto, and close the doors,” he instructs, but sounding more business-like than annoyed so Yamamoto obliges swiftly. It is starting to get chilly anyways.  
  
“How’d it go?” she asks, plopping down on her gigantic bed and bouncing happily. She leans forward over her knees and fixes Gokudera with a bland smile, swinging her crossed ankles.  
  
“That bastard isn’t giving me shit,” he growls, tossing his glasses on the bedside table and crossing the room to pour himself some scotch from a demure crystal decanter. “Keeps spewing crap about blah blah don’t know what you’re talking about blah blah wish I could meet your boss blah blah I’m a total shit-licker with those dirty diamonds up my ass.”  
  
Smiling, Yamamoto ducks her head and studies the hem of her skirt. He complains a whole ton, but the truth is, Gokudera gets this manic light in his eyes every time Tsuna lets him beat the fear of the Vongola into their rivals with nothing but words. Yamamoto knows him better than anyone else at this point; he loves this job only slightly less than he loves the Tenth.  
  
“If that’s the case, I’m surprised he’s still alive,” she jokes instead, looking up and catching his eyes. He snorts and finishes his scotch, then stares morosely at the empty glass.  
  
“Just give me time,” he mutters, and reluctantly sets it down. Suddenly, he looks up at her sharply. “Baseball freak, we’re invited to dinner at eight. Do you have anything to wear?”  
  
Yamamoto obediently points to the oak wardrobe next to the scotch, and Gokudera pulls open the door to study the clothes inside. “The blue,” she says, and he brings it out into the light to eye it critically. It’s taken Yamamoto a couple trips similar to this one to figure out that ‘dinner’ with criminals doesn’t mean some pasta, some wine, and maybe hearty heartwarming anecdotes about grandchildren and successful jewel heists, but break-out-the-Versace-and-Manolo-Blahniks-and-Lafite-Rothschild sort of affairs. After facing Gokudera’s horrified castigation when she once suggested she go in her pantsuit, she’s learned to have Bianchi and Haru coordinate some more elegant aspects of her wardrobe.  
  
“It’ll do,” Gokudera grunts, not sounding totally satisfied, but then again, he never is. Yamamoto just laughs and gets up, padding across the tiles in her bare feet to join him.  
  
“Aw, Gokudera,” she jests with a grin. “I thought you liked this one. I wore it at New Years in Tokyo, remember?”  
  
Gokudera snorts and snicks it back onto the rack, giving her a light glare. “Yamamoto, there’s a lot more to looking good than just the dress.” He cocks an imperious eyebrow at her over the rims of his glasses. “You could stand to learn from Sasagawa-san.”  
  
 _Ouch_ , Yamamoto thinks. Sometimes, Gokudera could be such a jerk. The man checks his watch then, and leaves for the door.  
  
“I’ll come by in another hour,” he instructs, picking up his papers and already losing interest in whatever they’d been talking about. “Be ready.”  
  
“Of course,” Yamamoto replies, but the door’s already swung shut on her words. It’s then that she realizes night has truly fallen, and only the pathetic bedside lamp is on. With a sigh, she flicks on the main lights. She grabs fresh clothes from her closet, including the mediocre blue dress and heads into the bathroom for a quick shower, wondering idly if she could get away with just eyeliner and mascara. Probably not, she decided, and turned around to dig her foundation, buried under her polishing kit, out of her luggage.  
  
 _The problem_ , she thinks as she scrubs French milled soap into her skin, _is that being secretly in love with your reluctant best friend who’s kind of an emotionally stunted basketcase gets your emotions kicked around a lot, and for the sake of the status quo, you can’t let on a thing_. But Yamamoto’s had like, a decade to get used to being in love with Gokudera, who is about as sensitive as a rock, and for the most part, it doesn’t bother her anymore. She tried, in the really early days of discovering what those fluttery symptoms in her guts meant whenever she saw Gokudera, to make him understand somehow. To this day, she still can’t decide if Gokudera is the most oblivious man alive, or the greatest actor in Japan, because every single one of her advances had been rebuffed, every time looking like total coincidence or just bad luck. It had gotten to the point where even Hibari was giving her these flat, disparaging looks and Gokudera still didn’t seem to react positively to her shorter skirts and flashier tops. In fact, he’d started to give her these wary looks again, and to unsubtly drop hints that the Tenth was good in love with Kyoko, and that he’d defend their beautiful, budding blossom of tender love from any would-be homewreckers, no matter who they were. And then favoring her with a slightly pitying look. So she simply stopped trying.  
  
They’re good friends now, she thinks, _partners_ , as she rinses herself off and then turns off the water. Nothing complicated, nothing unnecessary. It still gives her a pang to see him in the right light, but for the most part, she’s moved on. They’re the strongest team the Vongola’s got, and in a way, Yamamoto’s glad that things fell out like they did, because she’d rather carry any secret feelings to the grave than risk their partnership.  
  
The makeup is a slapdash job; Yamamoto may be ace with a baseball bat, but give her lipstick, and it’ll take four tries and plenty of cover-up to get it right. She’s gotten used to it over the years though, and at least looks presentable enough.  
  
She’s tugging on her silver sling backs when the door resounds with one knock, and then clicks open. Gokudera, immaculate in Italian-cut black-tie attire, strides in, adjusting his cufflinks with a precise, finicky motion. He has slicked back his hair, and his gaze looks starker and sharper than ever. His dinner jacket is unbuttoned though, and his cummerbund is missing.  
  
“Can’t be arsed,” he says dismissively after seeing her raised eyebrow. Briefly checking that she is presentable (Yamamoto admits she doesn’t mind; once, Hibari let her walk right into the New Year’s Ball with her skirt caught in the waistband of her pantyhose), he offers his arm stiffly. “Let’s go.”  
  
“Promise me you’ll talk about something other than politics?” she jests lightly; she doesn’t really expect to hear anything else at the table.  
  
Gokudera snorts and deftly maneuvers her around a bronze statuette (“French,” Gokudera had told her the first day. “A genuine Barthelemy Prieur, cast in his lifetime. This bastard’s a bit of a francophile.”). “It’s damn sight better than listening to you list the stats of all the present Dodgers.”  
  
“I can do the Yankees now, too,” Yamamoto tells him happily, and grins when he just calls her a moron.  
  
The dining room is tiled sienna-red, with vaulted ceilings painted in frescoes of naked, lumpy people. Elaborate iron-work candelabras hold candles that provide soft, warm lighting, and the balcony doors are open wide. On the first day, Yamamoto had barely been able to resist the urge to snap pictures with her digital camera of the beautiful room, and it still gives her a pleasurable jolt to walk in.  
  
“ _Signorina_ Takako,” Felice Fiori booms, crossing the room in wide strides with his arms held out in welcome. He’s shorter than Yamamoto by half a head, one of the reasons she’s chosen to wear lower heels tonight. His smile is warm and expansive, pulling and crushing his skin into a multitude of well-worn lines around his eyes and mouth. His hair is still full and dark at fifty, with iron gray creeping in through his sideburns. Like Gokudera, he looks born into his four-thousand euro suit. He comes up to Yamamoto, heedless of the difference in their height, and obligingly, she leans down as he kisses her on the cheek. “Bella,” he proclaims, his chin doubling and chest puffing proudly, as if Yamamoto is his very own daughter. “Signorina, you look absolutely _bellissima. Perfetto_!” When Yamamoto had first started attending these business trips with Gokudera years ago, he’d been surprised he hadn’t had to give her the talk about the fierce politics waged by manners and formalities. Yamamoto really thinks he shouldn’t have been; she is after all, a master of smiles herself.  
  
“ _Grazie_ , _Signor_ Fiori,” Yamamoto replies dutifully. “I like your,” she pauses and looks over him quickly. “Pocket square.” Besides her, Gokudera twitches and the signor blinks a little, but she just pastes on a bland, wide smile and blinks prettily at their host, her default mode when dealing with business associates. He recovers quickly, and thanking her effusively for her compliment, leads her to the table, where other guests are waiting, Gokudera following leisurely.  
  
There is a Giuseppo Martinelli, a trim, distinguished gentleman with an unsmiling visage and a shock of neat, white hair and his wife Catriona Hughes, frail and small with an expression nearly as grim as her husband’s. Martinelli is Fiori’s close friend and confidante, Yamamoto knows. She’s seen him before in talks with Fiori in the halls. From what Gokudera has told her, he is neither a fan nor friend of the Vongola; it’s obvious that up close, she doesn’t pass inspection with him.  
  
A young man with dark blonde hair and electric blue eyes is introduced next as Fiori’s nephew, Jacques d’Avignon. He is a graduate student at La Sorbonne in Paris and studying urban development.  
  
“Paris,” Yamamoto chirps in her awful Italian as she holds her hand out to shake. “I’ve always wished to go.”  
  
He draws her fingertips up briefly to his lips, smiling at her up through the artful disarray of his hair. “I hope you do, _mademoiselle_ ,” he replies. “It is an unforgettable city, especially if you are not alone.” A frisson of attraction runs up Yamamoto’s spine, and she laughs, as much startled as amused, and flicks her eyes over to where Gokudera is behind her and looking faintly unimpressed.  
  
Fiori booms laughter and slaps his nephew heartily on the back, good-naturedly ribbing him about his playboy ways, and the boy gives him a sheepish, crooked smile. Yamamoto thinks she likes that look more; it’s genuine and sweet. The boy looks harmless; it’s obvious he’s out of place in this dinner for upper-crust criminals, seated only at the whim of his fond relations. There is a whirlwind of other brief introductions, but Yamamoto doesn’t bother to put energy to remembering them; that is Gokudera’s job.  
  
“And the best for last,” Fiori announces dramatically, taking the hand of the remaining guest and drawing her forward. “Of course you know her, but ah, every time I see her, it is a fresh and wonderful experience, is it not? Ladies and gentlemen, my wife, Juliette.”  
  
Formally, Gokudera takes the hand offered and bows stiffly over it, and Yamamoto briefly wonders if she is required to do the same, or curtsy or something, but Juliette glides forward to press a soft, lily-scented cheek to hers.  
  
“Forgive my husband’s melodramatics,” she tells them. “He has very little to amuse him in his spare time.”  
  
Everyone laughs politely as Fiori mimes a mortal blow. Juliette smiles, polite and regal. She is a stately woman, yet willow-slender and delicate-featured. Though there is Italian and Corsican blood in her, you can hardly tell from the ash-blonde of her hair, the gray hardly visible at all. There is no crack in her veneer as the perfect hostess; Yamamoto is impressed that she can’t read a thing off of her, even after almost a week spent in close quarters.  
  
Dinner is long and boring; Yamamoto sits beside Gokudera and spends most of the time politely laughing at anything Fiori says in her hearing range and exchanging smiles with Jacques. Only once or twice does Gokudera surface from the conversation he has with Giuseppo and a minor official from Pisa to speak to her. Mostly, he murmurs in her ear to back off the boy; Juliette is famously fond of him, and she’s not renowned in organized families for no reason.  
  
“It is unheard of,” Giuseppo snaps in an irritated, fussy voice, and everyone looks to where the old man is staring down Gokudera, who is calmly drinking his wine. Most of the _coniglio_ , or rabbit, course has been finished. Yamamoto nibbles a fried _fiori di zucca_ and watches with interest as Fiori’s man lays into her companion. “You Vongola upstarts,” he says icily, pale with anger, and man, Yamamoto wishes she’d been paying a little more attention to what’d they’d been talking about. “Have you no shame?”  
  
“Seppo,” Fiori says in a jovially pleading voice that barely hides the under core of pure steel underneath. “My good friend, what is there to be upset about? Young Hayato here is speaking merely in terms of theory, not anything truly practical; calm down,” he urges as he takes Giuseppo’s arm soothingly, leading him out onto the balcony. Yamamoto is close enough to ear snatches of their conversation, though less as the guests resume their chatter.  
  
“There is no respect in the _famiglia_ anymore, when they send us these arrogant babes to discuss business. Felice, this is outrageous!”  
  
“My friend,” Fiori replies with soft emphasis. “That young cock is Hayato Gokuderra, and all reports are that he will be _consigliere_ to the Tenth Vongola within the year. Timoteo has repeatedly stated his faith in that man’s abilities, as well as his fondness for both of them. It’s not wise to misjudge them.”  
  
Yamamoto strains to hear more, but Gokudera narrows his eyes at her and purposely looks away.  
“They’re talking about you,” she replies in Japanese. “Don’t you want to know what they’re saying?”  
  
“Don’t need to,” he says in pointed Italian. “Old men like that are predictable as clockwork, talking always about respect as if it’s earned by dying after everyone else.”  
  
Giuseppo’s wife overhears him, and levels an absolutely freezing glare at the pair of them, but across from her, Jacques laughs.  
  
“ _Monsieur_ Gokudera, you have a mouth on you far braver than many men I know,” he tells him with obvious amusement and admiration.  
  
Gokudera just sneers elegantly. “Only little men believe in the illusion of bravery.”  
  
Yamamoto bursts into laughter and ruins his moment by digging an elbow into Gokudera’s side, making him flinch and glare. “Man, who died and made you Confucius?” she hoots. “Lighten up, Gokudera. I told you to leave the politics out of dinner. My dad always said that causes indigestion.” Cautiously, others chuckle at her artless frankness (and maybe her bad Italian), and Gokudera is giving her a sullen look, but she recognizes the hint of gratitude as well. Jacques is chuckling as well, if a bit unsure and Yamamoto isn’t positive, but she thinks Juliette is hiding a smile. Whatever tension there was has been diffused. Gokudera makes a smart, elegant apology to the lady of the house as well as to Giuseppo and Fiori when they reenter the dining room, and then it is time for dessert.  
  
Dinner stretches out over two hours, and it’s nearly eleven by the time Yamamoto is presented with a little shot glass of electric yellow _limoncello_.  
  
“You must try, Signorina,” Fiori urges. “My cousin makes it himself; he owns a villa in Capri where they grow the most beautiful lemons in the world.”  
  
It tastes like lemon-scented cleaning fluid to her, but she’s grown up in her dad’s sushi shop and been toasted with everything from Amazake to Moutai to whiskey since her first baseball game. Though the thick liquor prickles her eyes, she maintains a perfectly straight face as it goes down, to the cheers of her Italian hosts.  
  
Soon afterwards, the conversation breaks down into groups; Gokudera follows Fiori and Giuseppo towards the library, but not before raising a silent eyebrow at Yamamoto, who has been working on Jacques all night now. She smiles back, brilliant and wide, throws in a suggestive wink as well and he snorts in disgust but waves her off as they disappear from the dining room. She translates that to ‘do him at your own risk’; that’s about as close to permission as she’s going to get.  
  
“Signorina Takako,” begins a soft, clear voice and Yamamoto immediately turns around, her smile shifting to a polite attentive one as she faces Juliette.  
  
“ _Si, Signora_.”  
  
Juliette has sat like a queen at the head of the table throughout dinner, regal and indulgent as her guests amuse themselves around her, but now she leans forward and levels her clear blue gaze on her. Yamamoto feels her spine straighten automatically.  
  
“I believe my husband told me this is your first time in Toscana, is it not?”  
  
“My first stay, yes. I drove through between Rome and Milan a couple times in the past.” Yamamoto smiles and cocks her head prettily. “It is beautiful country you live in.”  
  
“Japan has its own beauty, I hear,” Juliette returns, gracious and delicate. “I have hoped to visit Kyoto before I am too old.”  
  
“Ha,” Yamamoto huffs and scratches her head. “I’ve been there once with my school. I don’t remember much of it—I spent most of the time chasing after Tsuna and Gokudera through an obstacle course in the mountains. The trees were pretty.” Trust Reborn to take advantage of what was supposed to be their graduation trip. On the other hand, Yamamoto had improved her reflexes by 0.04 seconds, and also got to watch Gokudera run around shirtless and sweaty. A lot.  
  
Jacques utters a muffled bark of startled laughter, and the remaining guests titter, bemused, but Juliette just smiles, patient, not at all thrown.  
  
“It must have been quite the experience, as the lone woman among such wolves.” And there it is, that hint of barb in the genteel frame. There’s a host of things people mean when they make a point of the Vongola’s choice of a female _capo_ (two, if you count Chrome, which she does out of solidarity), but they rarely mean well.  
  
“Well,” she replies with a little laugh, “Boys will be boys, won’t they? You understand me, I’m sure Signora; it’s much like growing up with a crowd of brothers and boy cousins, as you did.”  
  
The expression on Juliette’s face doesn’t flicker, but Yamamoto can feel her smile grow sharp. “How right you are,” she agrees. “Yet, I am certain the experience has only benefitted me in these later years.”  
  
“Heh,” Yamamoto replies, with a wide grin. “Don’t know about that, Signora. There’re still a couple of them who confound me every time.”  
  
  
  
After that, Yamamoto figured her tentative plans for the evening were non-existent; to emphasize it, Juliette had ordered Jacques to accompany her on some bullshit errand or the other, and so Yamamoto had bade Jacques’ beautiful eyes (near identical to his aunt’s, now that Yamamoto thinks about it) farewell and retreated to her room, planning on spending the rest of the night in sweats and checking her email to see if Squalo had any new videos for her.  
  
About an hour later, the knock startled her from the light doze she’d fallen into, and then Gokudera was leaning against her door, hair starting to muss and soften from the severe slickback.  
  
“I would’ve gotten the door,” Yamamoto says, the reproachful words completely at odds with her grin. “You might have gotten an eyeful.”  
  
Rolling his eyes, Gokudera came into the room and closed the door, then sunk into the armchair and propped his feet up on the bed with a sigh. “Saw Jacques in the rose garden with someone too short and blonde to be you. Figured Fat Maroni wasn’t your type and took the risk. _Dio_ , that sucked,” he said baldly, rubbing at his temples. “Thank fuck we are clearing out tomorrow.”  
  
With a little moue of disappointment at the news of Jacques, Yamamoto slid off the bed and poured out a finger of scotch, then padded back and handed it to him.  
  
“I suppose my whirlwind French romance is not to be,” she mourned, climbing back into bed and pulling his legs into her lap. “Haru emails me, you know. Tells me I am wasting my European vacations on work instead of fulfilling every girl’s dream cliché. I’m kind of disappointed in myself, too. Juliette isn’t that scary. I could take her in a match. Probably.”  
  
“Now I know you’re just being flippant,” Gokudera snaps irritably, but doesn’t pull his feet away as Yamamoto laughs and digs her thumbs into the arch of his foot. “Anyways, you’ll be glad to hear, we won’t be leaving this place totally empty-handed.”  
  
“No blood diamonds?” Yamamoto asks as she works.  
  
“Conflict diamonds,” Gokudera corrects. “And they won’t move officially, not now, with our express and detailed disapproval. Doesn’t mean they won’t try anyways. Didn’t get shit out of those old bastards, but I ran into the lady of the house on my way up, duly complimented her on her sapphires,” he says with a glint in his eye. “Got a name. Cato Mosca, a former gun-runner from Napoli, now operating with the Ciambino family.”  
  
Yamamoto waits a beat, until Gokudera unsubtly makes to take his feet off the bed and she continues again. “And? He’s a weapons dealer, so?”  
  
“Former,” he reminds her, and rolls the glass of scotch against his forehead. “Apparently, he’s been her main gem supplier for the past two years. I’ve come across his name once or twice in the records of this mess, though I need to figure out which ones.”  
  
She snorts and gently sets his foot down, then tugs the other one forward. “That doesn’t seem like a lot.”  
  
“There’s a lot you can do with a name,” Gokudera mumbles distantly, then with his usual shade of condescension. “I don’t expect you to understand.”  
  
“Suppose not,” she laughs and knuckles into the sore muscles, feeling a spike of vindictive pleasure at his wince. “So, Cato Mosca. We’ll be paying this man a little visit, won’t we?”  
  
Gokudera laughs then, a sort of dry chuckle and looks at her with a wry twist of his mouth. “The other way around, actually. We’ll see him at the estate for the Ninth’s charity gala.” He looks tired, but his eyes are glinting in the low light with what looks like anticipation; Yamamoto ducks her head to hide her smile, but he catches her anyways. “What,” he growls.  
  
“Nothing, Gokudera,” she laughs. “You just get so excited about diplomacy.”  
  
“You don’t understand the intricacies of these conversations,” he shoots back. “Everything happens in subtlety and misinformation. We take our victories where we get them.”  
  
Yamamoto holds up her hands in a soothing gesture and smiles self-deprecatingly. “Yes, fine. I’m just the dumb jock, I get it.” The truth is, she thinks Gokudera is sometimes envious of her; once they’d settled into mafia life, Gokudera has left defending the front increasingly to the other guardians while he receded with Tsuna to the locked boardrooms of criminal politics. And while Gokudera would never dream of complaining, his very nature as the storm is volatile animation; she knows he sometimes suffocates under his heard-earned poker face. So she smiles widely and pats his foot.  
  
“Hey, since we’re going up there anyways, can we stop by that place in, what’s it called? Boloney? With the Ducati factory. Haha, I wouldn’t mind blowing some of the budget on one of those bikes.”  
  
Gokudera snorts and swings his legs off the bed. “Bologna,” he corrects, “And it’s out of the way,” but she notices he doesn’t refuse outright. He sighs and fishes his pack out, knocking a cigarette into his palm. “You’ll need to dry clean that dress,” he notes abstractly as he heads to the door, and hooks the hanger on one finger. It’s a tradeoff—Yamamoto gets to play masseuse, Gokudera is the launderer. “Get some sleep; I’ll send someone to wake you at eight.”  
  
“Goodnight,” Yamamoto calls, and the door closes soft behind him. She falls back onto her pillows and stares at the whitewashed ceilings unblinkingly. There’s a sudden inexplicable feeling of incredible weariness that settles over her as her smile drops off her face; it feels like it’s been building for years.  
  
  
  
They leave late morning, declining lunch with polite firmness, and as their Audi pulls onto the _autostrada_ , Yamamoto can see Gokudera’s shoulder relax fraction by fraction. By the time they hit Florence, he’s shrugged off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves. All the windows are down, and he’s driving, one hand on the wheel and cigarette dangling from his mouth. Besides him, Yamamoto beats down the urge to reach over and smooth the gray hair from his eyes.  
Tsuna calls on their satellite phone just as they’re paying for lunch, two _panini_ from the closest deli, two cans of soda, a handful of Pocket Coffee for Gokudera.  
  
“Hey, Boss,” Gokudera answers, stalking out the store as Yamamoto pays for their food. She smiles at the stout, grim man behind the counter as she follows her partner, just in time to hear Gokudera give a short rundown of their trip followed by a point-by-point analysis of the important bits that would have gone on for another two hours had Yamamoto allowed it.  
  
Instead, she dumps his sandwich into his hands and takes the opportunity in the moment of confusion to steal the phone away.  
  
“Hey, Tsuna,” she greets cheerily, slipping into blessedly familiar Japanese. “We’re doing great!”  
  
“Give it back to me,” Gokudera gripes, but Yamamoto twirls out of reach and fetches up against the passenger side of the car, grinning at Gokudera while she listens to Tsuna’s voice.  
  
“How is it going, Yamamoto?” Tsuna asks, sounding amused. She wonders if she and Gokudera are that predictable.  
  
“Not bad! We’re passing by Florence now.” Yamamoto takes a big bite out of her sandwich and never breaks eye contact, chewing slowly as Gokudera hisses for her to hand the phone over _right now_. “Yeah, we should get there by dinner, uh-huh. So far it’s alright; no smiting yet, mmhmm. Haha, of course!” Laughing, she dodges as Gokudera stalks around the car, snapping and shouting and getting louder by the second. “No, everything’s fine, Tsuna, why would you ask?”

  
Finally, Gokudera manages to snag her arm and pin her to the car. He yanks the phone from her grasp and glares murder at Yamamoto from less than a foot away.  
  
“I am _so sorry,_ Tenth! I have no idea what the hell invaded this freak’s head,” he says venomously, but Yamamoto’s stock still against the warm black car, nearly chest to chest with the Storm Guardian. She can smell the heated silk of his shirt, the spicy citrus of his cologne and under that, fresh sweat, tobacco. “Don’t worry, Tenth, I’ll keep an eye on her, uh huh.”  
  
Gokudera has her casually fenced in, his legs loosely to either side of her, and one hand braced against the car’s roof, talking and looking out into the distance. His face is relaxed, almost happy as he listens to Tsuna, and it’s moments like these, unguarded and ordinary that nearly destroys her; it’s unbearable to be this close, and not touch. She thinks, _if I take one step forward, or if I wrap my hands around his tie and tug, or if I just touch my hand against his_ —  
  
The world explodes.  
  
Before the next second, Yamamoto is low on the ground, Gokudera’s hand hard on her shoulder, and scrabbling for the car door. The sandwich and satellite phone is on the ground, and under the rat-tat-tatting of guns she can hear the buzz of alarmed voices.  
  
“Get in the car!” she shouts as she finally gets the Audi open, and Gokudera scowls but dives inside, popping open the glove box and tossing her a Beretta before crawling for the driver’s seat. She doesn’t bother checking if it’s loaded; it always will be, and instead hauls herself up and returns fire. Their attackers are in a black van ( _God, could it get any more obvious?_ she thinks with a hysterical edge), jerking wildly as she puts lead straight through their front tire. “Bullseye,” she gloats, but then an old Fiat squeals around the corner, and Yamamoto drops as another wave of bullets fly over them.  
  
“Fuck, get inside, you fucking— come on!” Gokudera shouts, furiously tugging something from under his jacket, and then biting off the top of it. Yamamoto shoves inside, ass first and before the door’s even shut Gokudera’s flooring the accelerator and tossing whatever coin-sized explosive he prepped out his bullet hole-ridden window. She yanks her legs in as the door slams shut from the sudden lurch forward. They skid forward, and there’s an ugly screech as they come too close to a parked car, but Yamamoto’s too busy shooting through their cracked rear window to care, and then she’s ducking forward and holding on for dear life as the street behind them lights up in heat and noise.  
  
  
  
There’s no Ducati factory for them after that. They’ve lost the sat phone, but their cell phones are intact, and with the exception of a terse call to Tsuna and the Ninth respectively, they spend the rest of their journey in tense silence. The Audi looks like a prop car for a Die Hard movie, but everything under the hood is working, so Yamamoto climbs back to kick out the opaque, spider-webbed rear view window and they roar down the highways looking like Bonnie and Clyde on the lam.  
  
Neither of them is hurt, but Gokudera is furious and shaken and he hasn’t stopped smoking since they’d made it onto the autostrada. Yamamoto is little better; she drags _shigure kintoki_ out from the back seat and spends the trip polishing the blade fanatically, and resolves to give it a good whetting once they’re behind Vongola walls. She wants badly to ask who it was, maybe crack a joke, but even she had recognized the Fiat. The burnt-orange Fiat 500 had been in Fiori’s driveway this morning when they’d left.  
  
Twice they’re nearly pulled over by the polizia, but both times, Gokudera slips them cash and they’re coming into Turin before the sun sets. It’s another hour until they reach the Vongola estate somewhere in one of the secluded valleys of the Italian Alps. The temperature has dropped, and with so many of the windows blown out, there’s no protection from the mountain chill sweeping through the car. As Yamamoto sits shivering, they pull off just past the crowd of the city, and into the start of the suburbs. Gokudera navigates the streets with angry sweeps and jerks of the wheel, ignoring other drivers as they honk, outraged. They pull into a dark, narrow sidestreet, then turn into an open garage, where a grizzled man in dirty coveralls takes one look at the car and rolls down the aluminum garage doors.  
  
“Switch out,” Gokudera orders tersely, tossing him the keys and crossing to the trunk to grab their luggage. Yamamoto spares a brief and belated prayer of thanks that the bullets had miraculously missed the potentially highly explosive materials no doubt hidden away in Gokudera’s pack.  
  
The old mechanic grunted, running his hands over the Audi and shaking his head. “Fiat Panda, out back. Keys in the kitchen.”  
  
“Bill it to Vongola,” Gokudera replies, and the two of them enter the house. An old woman and a young girl are at the kitchen table, and the child stares wide-eyed as they pass through. Yamamoto tries to smile reassuringly, but the old woman is glaring righteously at her so she hurries through, following Gokudera as he snatches the keys off the counter and passes out through the back door.  
  
Their replacement vehicle looks twenty years old, and is an ugly blue that looks like house paint and Yamamoto manages to shoot Gokudera a betrayed look before he rolls his eyes and orders her to get in the car, spoiled brat.  
  
“Turin,” Yamamoto sighs as they roll back onto the streets, Gokudera driving at a slightly more sedate pace. “I know Turin; this is where they make Alfa Romeos. And Lancia. And, you know, newer Fiats.”  
  
“Shut up,” Gokudera snaps and glares at her. “I don’t see you pulling last minute transport out of your ass.”  
  
And she laughs, still sounding a little off, “Ducati factory, remember?”  
  
  
  
The Ninth and his guardians are on hand to greet them when they make it to the manor, and surprisingly, so is the Varia. Gokudera’s hackles, already on a hair-trigger system, rise upon seeing Xanxus’ pissy, stony face and his cohorts. Yamamoto herself feels a smile light up as she sees Squalo, standing behind Xanxus with his arms crossed.  
  
“Welcome, Gokudera, Yamamoto,” the Ninth greets, a half-smile on his face. Gokudera swallows and forcibly turns his attention to the Vongola don and gives him a curt, respectful nod.  
  
“Ninth,” he says politely. “I would be happy to debrief you on today’s events,” he begins, but the Ninth holds up a hand.  
  
“Thank you, Gokudera,” he tells him, some warmth creeping into his tone. “But right now, I am simply thankful the both of you are here and safe. Everything can wait until you two have had a chance to rest. Eat first, and then we shall talk.”  
  
“Thank you, Ninth,” Gokudera replies, and Yamamoto can hear the exhausted gratitude that barely makes it into his tone. “You are too generous.”  
  
And now that they’re back on home territory, Yamamoto feels the adrenaline drain from the lines of her back, and a low grade headache come to the front. She’s hungry too, and gladly follows everyone into a casual dining room with a plain wooden table and a couple neat, unornamented placemats. The two of them are presented with soup and bread, with the promise of some warmed risotto while the other Vongola family members arrange themselves around the room.  
  
“Voi, brat,” Squalo grunts as he takes the seat next to her. “What’s this diplomatic envoy bullshit you’re doing now anyways?”  
  
Yamamoto laughs and leans in to greet him with a peck on the cheek, which he makes a show of rubbing off.  
  
“Hi, Squalo!” she chirps. She can feel Gokudera glaring at Squalo, and then at each of the Varia in turn, then back to Squalo. “I’m just playing the hired muscle this time. Shigure’s supposed to be taking a nice little nap. Not anymore, I guess, hahaha.” She pats the shinai fondly and smiles widely, making most of the more ordinary Vongola nervous.  
  
“Pussying out,” Squalo spits. “If you feel like reattaching your metaphorical balls, let me know.” He steals the rest of her bread.  
  
“Haha, of course!” Yamamoto agrees, and now that the option’s out there, she’s itching for that moment of sweet, serene clarity and the cut of her blade. But before then, they’ll have to get through dinner and debrief.  
  
“Sometimes,” Gokudera mutters, “I don’t think he realizes you’re a girl.”  
  
“OI,” shouts Squalo. “I CAN HEAR YOU.”  
  
Behind them from somewhere, Belphegor is giggling. “I would think Squalo knows exactly how it is,” he says slyly, and Yamamoto winces, and sneaks a look towards Gokudera, whose eyes narrow.  
  
Her partner opens his mouth, but is interrupted by the Ninth coughing politely.  
  
“As it seems you have sufficient energy now,” he says wryly, “I wouldn’t mind hearing what happened earlier today.”  
  
“Yes, of course, Ninth,” Gokudera immediately replies, ever the perfect subordinate. Yamamoto lets Gokudera run the conversation; he puts things way better than she ever could. She stops paying attention and pokes at the remnants of her risotto, swallowing yawns, and then just stops hiding them.  
  
The Ninth and his advisors listen closely to Gokudera’s account, except for Xanxus who looks murderously bored out of his mind, but finally, the old man cuts through a detailed explanation of the illegal mods the Fiat was sporting with an upheld hand.  
  
“I think we’ve heard enough for tonight,” he says, smiling knowingly at Yamamoto, who tries unsuccessfully to stop mid-yawn. She grins and shrugs sheepishly when Gokudera looks around to glare at her, scandalized by her rudeness. “Gokudera, you’ve given us a lot of information, and rest assured; this incident will not pass by unnoticed.”  
  
“If possible, Ninth, I would like to be part of the discussions on our response,” Gokudera requests formally, his frustration and anger steeling his tone.  
  
“Actually,” the Ninth replies, leaning forward slightly, “I would like you to continue leading the talks with Mosca. You are currently the most well-informed of my men, and though your information is extremely sufficient, I want someone who understands this discussion inside and out to cover this.”  
  
“No worries,” Yamamoto pipes up. “I can take care of the dirty work.”  
  
The old man makes a ‘so everything goes’ kind of gesture and then smiles. “And so you shall.” He scrapes back in his chair, and automatically, everyone stands as he does. “Rest now; tomorrow, we will resume talks.”  
  
“Yes, Ninth,” everyone chorused dutifully. “Good night.”  
  
  
  
Yamamoto lets Squalo talk her into 8 a.m. practice (actually, he wants five a.m., but she just laughs at him until he grudgingly relents), then heads with Gokudera down to their usual rooms in the east wing. It’s a quiet walk, with only their footsteps echoing along the paneled corridors.  
  
“Goodnight then,” Yamamoto says as they reach their facing rooms. Gokudera just grunts distractedly, so she sighs and drops her bags. Before he can duck into his suite, she crosses and slips in front of him, close enough to knock her forehead against his and peer up at him behind his bangs, shakes his forearm gently. “You okay?”  
  
“Fine,” he says curtly, but sounds more tired than angry. He tilts his head back, breathing deep, and finally gives her a faint smile, a trace of amusement in his green eyes. “…That explosion today was pretty sweet, huh?”  
  
Laughing, Yamamoto pats his head fondly and for once, he doesn’t shake her off. “Yes, Gokudera, that explosion was spectacular. Goodnight.”  
  
“Knock on my door when you go meet that crazy bastard,” he says.  
  
Yamamoto agrees, and the two of them disappear into their separate rooms.  
  
  
  
Now she’s on home soil, Yamamoto feels relieved and stretched, like she’d been compressed down in a tiny box and then released in the open. The day dawns bright and clear; from her room, she can see swathes and swathes of thick, green pines, rising and falling with the wrinkles of the Alps. Shigure kintoki is deceptively harmless looking in the morning light as she bounces it on her shoulder and leaves her room. Across the hall, she raps at the door, but before she’s even done, the door’s swinging open and Gokudera is facing her, already half dressed and sharp-eyed.  
  
“Couldn’t sleep?” Yamamoto asks, concerned. Gokudera shrugs and briskly buttons up his shirt.  
  
“Just woke up early. Are you meeting with that fishy freak?”  
  
Laughing, Yamamoto confirms it. “You want to join us?”  
  
He snorts and quickly buttons up his sleeves. “Unless I can toss TNT in your faces, I’ll pass on the stick fighting.”  
  
She chuckles and then leans her sword against the wall, reaches over to tie his tie. It’s the one thing Gokudera allows her to do for him; for all his fashion savvy, he never manages a perfectly straight knot. Sliding the neat half-Windsor up, she straightens his collar and then gives him a final pat. “I’ll see you at lunch then,” she tells him cheerfully.  
  
“Avoid head injuries,” he replies vaguely, already turning away. “Can’t lose anymore brain cells.”  
  
  
  
Squalo meets her behind the manor, at the top of the gardens. The green lawn spreads for two acres before dropping away steeply into the edges of a clear blue lake that reflects the sky above. Yamamoto has seen the fountains of the Villa d’Este once, when she first came to Italy. The Vongola gardens are nothing like the elaborate water gardens of Tivoli, but it is no less compelling. Perfect, symmetrical marble balustrades and walkways cross the ground; one side is the mirror image of the over. The hedges are honed to edged perfection, and alpine bushes are shaped carefully into animals and chess pieces, each standing singular in the blank lawn. There is one central fountain, where an elaborate piece of the Roman god Sol Invictus rousing his chariots is the freestanding centerpiece. If Bianchi were here, Yamamoto might have gotten the usual lecture of the heavy influence of French traditions, especially of the gardens of Versailles, of how the culture of the Italian Alps is in ways more multicultural than, say, Rome. She would have gained an appreciation of the perfect symmetry, the fanatical perfection of each sculpted hedge. Instead, she has Squalo, who stomps straight through the grounds, ignoring the established walkways and whatever patch of earth the gardeners have roped off.  
  
“Voi, let’s get this fucking show on the road,” Squalo shouts, turning to her with a wide, glittering grin that has more business on a bear trap than a face, as they near the flat green expanse that comprises the far half of the garden. Yamamoto closes her eyes briefly and sucks in a lungful of cold, crisp mountain air. She can hear the soft waves of the lake on pebbled beaches. Her muscles are loose from sleep; she rolls her shoulders, pulls her arm across her chest then the other, and stretches her legs briefly while Squalo mutters something or the other about ‘real swordsmen don’t pussy around with warm up—the pure killing spirit should keep you hot enough’. Yamamoto has spent her childhood and young adulthood playing baseball though, and loves the short, easy prologue to heavy exercise, so she ignores Squalo blithely.  
  
“Let’s go,” she says cheerfully; Squalo mutters ‘final-fucking-ly’ and then blurs out of sight.  
  
They spar—or, as outsiders would probably see, attempt violent murder on each other, devoid of assistances from boxes; sometimes, a fight is best at its simplest, most visceral level. Yamamoto sinks into the frame of mind easily, the one of utter calm and peace, where absolutely nothing matters except striking and blocking and coil and release. The only time she comes close to surfacing is when she hits the ground, and realizes it isn’t even grass under them; it’s Astroturf. It makes her smile and then laugh, and then Squalo gets pissed at her distraction and she’s busy for the next five minutes defending a particularly vicious drive. Squalo’s a noisy guy; in battle and at rest, morning, night, on the field, in bed, everywhere. Yamamoto doesn’t really mind; it’s what makes hanging out with him fun, and it’s nice that he hasn’t changed since they’d first met. Like that gleefully vicious look in his eyes, when he’s about to pull something totally insane and destructive out of his sleeve? Yeah, she loves that look-  
  
Light and glitter explode between them, and Yamamoto reels backwards, eyes watering and coughing from the small cloud Gokuera’s signature flash bomb raised up. She hears Squalo squawk, enraged and thrown off course and looks to where Gokudera is standing off to the side with an expression on his face that promises bad news.  
  
“Oi, what the fuck, fucking pyrobrat! Y’askin’ for a skewering or something?” Squalo snarls at him, shaking his sword, but Gokudera just looks at him flatly.  
  
“What’s going on?” Yamamoto asks, her smile gone. “Is it Tsuna?”  
  
He shakes his head slightly, and Yamamoto only has time to feel a glimmer of relief.  
  
“Felice Fiori and Giuseppo Martinelli are dead,” he says grimly. “Juliette Fiori just arrived at the gates.”  
  
“What happened?” she blinks, startled by the news, and Squalo is standing beside her, crossing his arms and frowning.  
  
“Assassins,” Gokudera tells her, but his tone is too neutral to be condemning. “The Ninth wants you to be there when we question her.”  
  
  
  
Yamamoto takes a quick shower and pulls on her black suit with the bathroom door open and Gokudera in her room alternately filling her in on the scarce details of the situation and snapping at her to hurry the hell up. She bolts out the bathroom, still scrubbing at her short, spiky hair with a towel, but mostly dressed. Gokudera holds up her suit jacket, she steps into her black Loubotins that make her feel like a badass corporate bitch instead of a scuffed up jock playing dress up and they leave for the conference room.  
  
As they walk quickly, Yamamoto breaks into Gokudera’s running commentary to ask if they can detour by the kitchen, but just laughs and retracts her question when the look he gives her is filled with apoplectic offense. He sighs impatiently though, and tosses a Pocket Coffee at her without breaking his stride.  
  
In the conference room, the Ninth is waiting already, his guardians and advisors congregated around the heavy mahogany table. Juliette Benoit-Corbone is seated across on the long end of the table. Her hair is neat but unelaborate; she’s wearing plain, long-sleeved cashmere the color of cream. Her eyes are red and puffy, her face pale and tight. There’s a clean bandage on the side of her forehead, and Yamamoto can see a creeping bruise below its edges. She’s the very picture of the widow tragedy caught unaware. When she sees Gokudera and Yamamoto, she tries to stand and greet them with a tremulous smile, but Gokudera quickly crosses to her side and gently urges her to remain in her seat. The Ninth nods to the pair of them and gestures for them to take seats.  
  
“As you well know,” he begins gravely, “Felice Fiori and his business partner Giuseppo Martinelli were killed yesterday, around four in the afternoon.”  
  
Yamamoto notices Xanxus slip into the room, Squalo and Lussuria behind him. The three of them stand against the walls. The leader of the Varia has his arms crossed, a typically stormy expression on his face. She wonders if he already knows who killed them. If he does, it’s obvious he has no intention of saying anything.  
  
“Signora,” Gokudera says in his soft, diplomat voice. “Can you tell us as much about the attack as you possibly remember?” Yamamoto remembers a time when Gokudera could barely stand to be civil to his friends, much less to trauma victims. Seeing him in action always makes her smile, but it’s an inappropriate reaction so she ducks her head and tugs fussily at her sleeves.  
  
Juliette takes a breath and nodded with only a shadow of her old, effortless serenity. “It happened in the afternoon; I had just come back from taking my nephew to the airport around four or five, and parked the car next to an orange Fiat I’d never seen before. Then I heard it,” her voice dries up as her throat works visibly. “Two shots. I ran into the house, and Felice and Giuseppo were lying on the ground. I think,” she chokes softly, “I think Felice was dead already; there was s-so much blood on his f-face… I turned and ran, and left my husband there because there were more shots, coming from inside the house. Then, suddenly, I don’t know. There must have been someone else, because someone hit me, here,” she gingerly touched the bandage, “and I fainted. When I woke up, I drove here; it was the only place I could think of to come.”  
  
No one asks why she hadn’t gone to the police. In their line of work, the question is obsolete.  
  
Yamamoto can tell there’s a world of cautious skepticism in everyone’s mind, but Juliette doesn’t seem to notice as she accepts the handkerchief Gokudera silently hands her.  
  
“Did you see who killed your husband?” Gokudera prompts, voice deceptively gentle. “Who he was, or what he looked like?”  
  
“Yes,” Juliette stated, firmly, her jaw clenched. “I saw him.” Her eyes glint like steel diamonds. “It was Cato Mosca. Cato Mosca shot my husband.”  
  
  
  
They continue prompting her for information, but her main point out of the way, Juliette becomes more and more emotionally wrought. The Ninth quickly postpones the debriefing, and sends Juliette into the comforting circles of his niece, but stays the rest of them in the room, looking grim as he returns to his place at the table.  
  
“I would require more time for research, Ninth,” Gokudera states flatly. “I’ve only just begun to look into Cato Mosca; so far, nothing suggests any reason for him to kill Fiori or Martinelli; nothing we have on them points to any sort of conflict.”  
  
“There are already men trying to confirm Signora Fiori’s story,” the Ninth replies, a faint frown on his face. “I too, have my reservations. Tonino, you remember Mosca,” he says addressing a jowly associate on his left.  
  
“I do, Ninth,” a big man with a severe tilt to his mouth answers with a curt nod. “And Visconti did business with him once when he was in Napoli. This is not his style, we both agree.”  
  
“So, Juliette is lying,” Yamamoto chirps, and Gokudera’s mouth twists.  
  
“Please refrain from saying that in her presence,” he says dryly and Yamamoto just chuckles. “But yes, I believe she’s… prevaricating.” Gokudera turns to the Ninth. “Sir, what I would like to know is if Fiori’s murder has anything to do with yesterday’s attack. It doesn’t make sense; even if he intended us harm, Cato Mosca couldn’t have known that we were given his name, and frankly I don’t think he has the resources for such a public attempt.”  
  
“It’s also unlikely he would sabotage himself,” Nougat points out from his position behind the Ninth’s chair, studying a sheaf of papers before him. “He’s on the guest list of Saturday evening’s gala. It’s bad form to attack your hosts before their party.”  
  
“Voi,” Squalo barks with a scowl. “Does anyone actually know this bastard at all besides on paper? If he knew those two brats were there on diamond business, who’s to say he didn’t decide to play it safe, ah? I don’t like the sound of that woman, but Mosca isn’t innocent either.”  
  
“I’ve seen his pictures before,” Lussuria says thoughtfully, sunglasses obscuring his eyes. He taps his cheek delicately with one finger, an upside down smile spreading across his face. “What a handsome boy, oh my. All the better if he has a mind to match. Xanxus, allow me the honors?”  
  
“Hold on, we are not putting a hit on anyone,” Tonino cuts in sharply, but under Xanxus’ black stare, quiets. The Ninth watches Xanxus calmly, expression impassive.  
  
“Well, Xanxus?” he asks gravely. “Is that what you recommend?”  
  
The Varia leader glowers at everyone in the room before kicking off from the wall with one big, black boot and stalking through the door. “Scum like that isn’t worth my attention.” He looks over his shoulder at the Ninth as he leaves. “Or yours.”  
  
“Voi, we’re not through yet either.” Squalo points a finger at Yamamoto, smirking as he falls into step behind Xanxus and Lussuria.

In the week until the gala, Yamamoto gladly spends her time sparring with Squalo or playing the one-woman audience to Gokudera’s mind processes. The truth is, their time at the estate had been planned as some well-earned R&R in all but name. With recent events though, it felt almost like being at home again, with Gokudera on the warpath while Yamamoto waited tensely for her next set of orders. Coupled with the frenzy of the upcoming gala, and Yamamoto chooses to spend most of her time as much out of the way as possible.  
  
The Vongola’s charity gala is one of the most respected events in mafia circles; both an incentive to benefit a spread of different charities as well as a supposedly apolitical event that nevertheless sees its fair share of mingling and schmoozing, an invitation to the main event is a coveted commodity by many of the families, large and small. The front lawns are meticulously gridded out and staked with white tents, which come gala day will be manned by charity organizations and their presenters. As evening falls though, the crowd will be directed to the ballrooms, where much networking and under the tables deals will be struck. It is classic mafia, and the Vongola are righteously proud of it.  
  
However, neither Gokudera nor Yamamoto have a hand in its planning; Gokudera seizes the freedom to procure documents about the Ciambino family and anything at all related to Cato Mosca; Yamamoto sees carefully arranged files on Fiori and the Corbone family as well. Somehow, he’s gotten police reports of the crime scene and has outlined and scribbled its margins in with red pen. Within Gokudera’s suite, Yamamoto helps pin up highlighted documents on the corkboard strip. From these frenzied collections, they begin sketching out a profile of Fiori, Juliette, and Mosca. As they painstakingly analyze copies of receipts, telephone transcripts, letters, it becomes clearer and clearer that none of the three are at all close to clean. Juliette, they find out, is closer to her French Connection heritage than they thought, and with an incoming report Gokudera’s somehow obtained from a very confidential la Sûreté file, it reveals that Juliette has been the one handling nearly all the northern business for her husband’s diamonds. On the other hand, from the files that they’ve gathered, it seems as if Fiori has been having trouble delivering the agreed upon number of diamonds to Mosca. Informant testaments of their arguments, in which Mosca accused Fiori of holding out, while Fiori insisted that he’d sent him the exact amount promised, are filed neatly into Gokudera’s binder to be critiqued and marked up.  
  
Then, every morning, Gokudera meets with the Ninth to update any information he’s gathered, and arranges to have afternoon teas with Juliette as well. Gokudera puts more effort into charming the widow than he has previously; in hopes, he tells Yamamoto sourly after one such session of tea, of hearing any slip she might make. But Juliette Benoit-Corbone has nearly three decades on Gokudera in social politics, so mostly he ends up trying to wash away talk of unmarried cousins and marriage prospects with scotch than gathering information.  
  
“Maybe you should join us,” Gokudera ponders, a frown etched into his brow and moodily contemplating his whiskey. “Women will open up to other women, right?” He’s slumped low in her armchair, legs out and crossed on the foot stool, rolling the glass against his forehead.  
  
Yamamoto laughs and looks up from where she’s stretching. “Juliette doesn’t like me,” she points out, smiling and laying her stomach flat against the ground. She looks up after realizing the room’s fallen silent. He is staring at her with a peculiar expression.  
  
“I,” Gokudera says doubtfully, “Did not get that impression.”  
  
She shrugs and climbs up from her position, shaking out her limbs. “It’s a girl thing; hard to explain.” When she looks at him, Gokudera’s staring at her with a stubborn, ‘try me’ expression.  
  
Well, she supposed she could. Scratching her head, Yamamoto tsks thoughtfully. “It’s a little bit like what went on between you and Giuseppo,” she tells him. “You know, old versus new. I think I probably present a challenge she just can’t beat anymore. Plus, I’m not like her,” she continues, sitting on the bed with one leg pulled up. She shrugs. “You tell me; do you think she’s smart?”  
  
Gokudera nods slowly.  
  
“She must be, right? Even I can tell, haha,” she laughs. “Juliette is very intelligent, and very skilled, you know. Conversationalist, diplomat, hostess, oh, she’s quite perfect. Kyoko, I’m afraid to say, could stand to go under her tutelage,” Yamamoto says with a grin.  
  
“Terrible idea,” Gokudera grumbles. “Whoever the Tenth chooses is a paragon of the ideal mafia wife.” He drinks and glares darkly. Yamamoto shrugs but doesn’t retract her comment.  
  
“Okay then. Now look at me,” she instructs, smiling and waving her fingers at him. “I’m nowhere near as smart as her, I’m afraid. I have you picking out my outfits. My idea of a fun time is going out to the ball game and getting mustard down my shirt. I’m about as sophisticated as a rock.”  
  
He’s hiding his grin now. “Don’t know about that,” he says slyly. “I know some pretty classy rocks.” She laughs, secretly thinking ‘ _Jerk_ ’.  
  
“What I’m trying to say is, look at us. She was my counterpart, you see? You’re my Felice, I’m your Juliette. I’m in the same position as her, yet here I am, swinging swords and traveling across countries with you. Felice travels alone to do business; she stays home and deals with information second-hand, never getting to laugh, or cry, or cut anyone with anything except for her words.” She cocks her head, and gives Gokudera a faint smile. “I’m the lucky one. She knows that as well as I.”  
  
“You’re saying she’s jealous,” Gokudera restates, one eyebrow lifted.  
  
“I suppose so, in a way,” Yamamoto laughs, scrubbing at her hair. “You know I don’t say these things very well. You should ask Bianchi; she’ll explain it better.”  
  
“No,” Gokudera replies, getting up from his seated position and giving Yamamoto a long, considering look. “No, I think I do understand,” he says finally, and then adds, a touch awkwardly. “Thank you.”  
  
“Haha, sure,” Yamamoto replies, watching as he closes the door quietly behind him, glad he left before he could notice the blush heating her face suddenly and unexpectedly. She looks to the small votive painting of the Madonna above the bathroom door. The placid lady stares back, wise and dry.  
  
“Yeah,” she sighs, then brightens up. “Time for a run!” She tugs her shoes out from the back of her closet, and bounces out the door.  
  
Down further than the garden, is the lake that belongs to the Vongola. On this lake, the Ninth taught his sons how to fish and to swim. Rumors are Giannichi hid a prototype submarine under its mirror-bright surface. Some say that the Fifth once kept a monstrous squid in its waters as a pet. Yamamoto thinks it’s a lake whose circumference is less than two miles—if there truly was a gargantuan sea monster housed in it, it must have lived a very fishbowl life indeed. The trail around the lake edge is paved the first half-mile from the house before trailing off into well-worn dirt. The pines crowd close to the path and lake edge; the sun is in full strength above, but the dappled shadows keep the air cool and breezy. Yamamoto sets an easy pace, alternating sprints and jogs. Near the far end of the lake, the path climbs up as the edge steepens to a cliff side. She digs her toes into the sudden incline and relishes the burn in her thighs and calves as she finally clears the top, shaking her feet to dislodge the dark dust from her shoes. There’s a small Japanese gazebo strategically placed along the edge of the path; they say Vongola Primo had had it built for his Rain Guardian, a place where the Japanese expat could have taken a quiet tea and indulged in playing his _takebue_.  
  
Juliette is sitting at the stone table inside, watching Yamamoto calmly from her seat and suddenly, Yamamoto’s highly aware of the sweat beading along her forehead and her loud pants for breath against such placid surroundings. If she were the sort to get self-conscious, this would be a terrifically awkward moment.  
  
“ _Buon pomeriggio_ , Signora,” she smiles instead, bright and wide.  
  
“Signorina Yamamoto,” Juliette greets with a faint smile in reply. She is straight-backed and dressed for tea with the queen after a funeral; the high-cut black collar on her jacket emphasizes the delicate features and her pale hair. Her hand waves politely before her. “Do you care to join me?”  
  
“I would think you having tea with Gokudera,” Yamamoto says with a small laugh as she trots over obediently. Juliette makes a small moue of distress.  
  
“To be perfectly honest, Signorina,” she says with the perfect touch of contrition and self-deprecation, “I’m hiding. Oh, he is a good enough companion, and I do appreciate his efforts not to abandon me, but I suppose I am getting old; he speaks so aggressively. It raises my blood pressure so.”  
  
Startled, Yamamoto laughs loudly and genuinely. “He’s always been like that, Signora. He means well, and I tell you it’s lucky you meet him now; ten years ago, he was twice as bad.” Juliette smiles wryly.  
  
“I believe you mentioned going to school together. You grew up together then? With the Vongola Tenth?” she asks.  
  
“Since middle school,” Yamamoto agrees. “All us guardians have known each other since then.”  
  
“Ah,” Juliette says, with little inflection, and Yamamoto is a little thrown, but then she continued. “I knew Felice since I was a girl myself. Barely a woman then. I was eighteen, and in Napoli, with my father.” The lines around her eyes crinkle as she smiles at her younger companion. “My cousin and I would escape from the city to the dockside, it would get so hot, and the smell of garbage! Terrible. We would sit in our white dresses and tie our hair back with ribbons and eat gelato instead, watch the tourists and sailors on the wooden docks and try desperately to stay cool. He worked on the ferries to Capri then, as he did every summer. I used to watch him work, trying to be secret. But Felice was never so blind as anyone thinks,” she admits with a touch of, what? Pain, perhaps, or bitterness. “It was he who found excuses to walk by me, to exchange smiles and greetings.”  
  
Uncomfortably, Yamamoto listens quietly as the old woman sits, suffused in grief and memories. “I’m truly sorry for your loss,” she finally offers solemnly. “As much as his and my famiglia’s views differed, he was ever kind and welcoming to me; I won’t forget that.”  
  
The woman’s brilliant blue eyes focuses on her briefly, and Yamamoto feels like she is being measured as coldly as livestock before the look softens. “Thank you,” Juliette replies politely, but the moment of sentimentality is over; with the faint feeling that the wrong words were exchanged, Yamamoto bids her farewell, and continues her run.  
  
  
  
Tsuna cannot make the charity gala this year, which is just as well since his Second is attending anyways, but Bianchi is coming, both for the Vongola as well as an unofficial liaison for her father. Yamamoto is supposed to pick her up from the airport, but the Ninth is still wary of attack on her and Gokudera, and so she doesn’t see the older woman until late afternoon two days before the ball. Bianchi has officially greeted the Ninth and seen to her brother before Yamamoto is called in to lead Bianchi to her guestroom, which happens to adjoin her own.  
  
“Takako, it’s good to see you alive,” Bianchi intones solemnly, and greets her the Italian way, a brief press of cheek to cheek, a soft smack of the lips. Yamamoto smells a waft of Bianchi’s distinct perfume—the sweet fragrance of baking, underscored by the bitter almond of cyanide.  
  
“Sorry we weren’t there to meet you,” Yamamoto apologizes with a sheepish smile. “The Ninth thought it better safe than sorry.”  
  
“I find myself agreeing with him,” Bianchi says wryly.  
  
“Worked out for me either way,” Gokudera grunts from behind, still seated at the conference table as he studies the latest reports. “Don’t know why you couldn’t take a cab anyways.”  
  
Bianchi frowns. “Hayato, is that any way to address your older sister?” She slips her aviators down her nose as he glances up, and watches with a small, satisfied look as he pales rapidly.  
  
“Aren’t you only staying three days? This is a lot of luggage for one ball, isn’t it?” Yamamoto interjects hastily before Gokudera can do an impromptu impression of Mt. Vesuvius, deftly pulling up the handles on some of the larger suitcases. There are four of them.  
  
“Aren’t you a dear,” Bianchi coos, and allows Yamamoto to lead them out of the conference room and down the corridor. “Only three are for me, understand. The fourth is for you, naturally.”  
  
“Me?” Yamamoto blurts out, blinking. She cuts a sideways look to her pale-haired companion. “I don’t remember asking for anything from Japan.”  
  
“You didn’t. Everything in the fourth is from Milan; didn’t you wonder why I arrived so late?”  
  
With a certainty that scares her, Yamamoto suddenly realizes what is inside that fourth luggage, and she can feel a mingling of exasperation and dread and glee welling up inside.  
  
“I was just going to wear my blue dress,” she sighs, half-pleading. “I thought you all liked it.”  
  
Bianchi laughs, low and husky as they reach the heavy wooden doors to her room, and ushers Yamamoto inside. “Takako, a woman must never be satisfied with mediocrity,” she announces.  
  
“You say the same things he does, only nicer,” Yamamoto bemoans with a morose chuckle, and succumbs to the inevitable.  
  
  
  
The day before the gala, guests begin to arrive. The main Vongola manor has over thirty rooms prepared for guests; the additional hunting lodge on the far side of the lake has another fifteen. More guests have booked up every hotel and villa in a ten mile radius. Without having been asked, Yamamoto volunteers to help organize security on the compound, and spends most of the day hanging out with next generation of Vongola family members, ostensibly securing the premises and doing guest check offs, but mostly giving directions to the bathrooms, flirting with the younger upstarts, and for one memorable fifteen minutes, chasing a mafia princess’s spoiled lapdog halfway through the manor. She’s laughing breathlessly by the time the Cook manages to distract the dog with a fatty cut of beef, and her cohorts are able to jump the wayward animal.  
  
“Having fun hanging with fishbait?” Squalo growls from behind her, and she turns in time to see him grin savagely at her panting, red-faced companions. Gokudera is a few steps behind, an impassive scowl on his face and a cigarette between his lips.  
  
“Fishbait, he calls us,” grumbles one of the men who hasn’t entirely learned to fear discriminately yet. “We just spent an entire morning chasing down some Legion-plagued hellspawn demon beast for some underage prima donna. Have we no dignity?”  
  
“Take the dog, and shut up,” his friend hisses in reply, shoving the wriggling, stupidly noisy creature into his arms. “Signor Squalo takes his namecalling literally.”  
  
“Fuck yeah I do,” Squalo leers at them, dropping his good arm heavy around Yamamoto’s shoulders. He casually taps his sword arm against his shoes, grinning fit to unnerve most large predators. “Fresh meat with the blood still pumping attracts the best kind of prey.”  
  
The unfortunate boy turns pasty gray and Yamamoto takes pity on him, because Mario isn’t a bad kid.  
  
“So what’s up, Squalo? Are you relieving us? I can show you the rounds we’re doing!” she says, bumping hips companionably and laughing when he spits on the ground in high form of disgust.  
  
“I’m bringing you some specs on the guests, actually,” Gokudera says dryly, taking a folder from his suit. “I’m not sure why he tagged along; perhaps he has a crush?” The latter sentence is accompanied with a cutting look.  
  
“Just because you lack the balls of a real man,” Squalo begins, as Gokudera casually flashes a couple sticks of dynamite up his sleeve and glares pointedly back at the Varia man, who swears and raises his sword.  
  
“Let me know when you figure out which of you has the bigger dick,” Yamamoto tells them, only half joking, and flips open the folder. The sheet she finds herself reading is a detailed profile of Cato Mosca, including his past jobs and current activities. There isn’t much from his school days and childhood, only a birthdate and a note about his mother, who died months after his fourteenth year. His father is unmentioned. Gokudera drifts to her side as she flips the page over and continues reading. There’s a glossy photo of the man paperclipped neatly to the top, small and rectangular. Cato Mosca has smooth, tight skin the color of the _marocchino_ Bianchi drinks every morning. His hair is a matte black that is cropped close to his head, tightly curled against his skull. His face is angular and long, with high, sharp cheekbones and a too-defined chin. Something about him, perhaps the tilt of his lips or the crook of his brow, is oddly familiar. Yamamoto frowns and looks up. Gokudera returns her stare expressionlessly.  
  
“There’s not much in here,” she observes, smiling and making a show of pinching the thin sheaf of papers.  
  
“Bite me,” Gokudera replies coolly. “You try pulling a full profile of some second-rate mobster in two days; we’ll see how much you come up with. I’ve got Shoichi back home hacking the shit out of Interpol; we’ll know in a couple more days, but he’s arriving in,” he glances at his watch. “Two hours.”  
  
Yamamoto ‘hmms’ and cocks her head prettily, knowing that Gokudera hates it when she does it to him. Sure enough, he scowls and bites his cigarette, then jerks his head and walks back towards the house. Yamamoto follows, Squalo in step, with his arm now slung casually around her waist. She raises a curious eyebrow at him, but he just bares his teeth at her. Up ahead, Gokudera’s shoulders are stiff and displeased, but he’s silent, except for the puff of his cigarette. _Boys_ , Yamamoto thinks, and shoves Squalo off good-naturedly, ignoring his squawk of protest as she catches up with Gokudera.  
  
His eyes flicker sideways to her briefly, the look almost unreadable, but Yamamoto can tell he’s a little bit pleased. She smiles back brilliantly, but as usual, Gokudera’s mind has already sped on to different matters.  
  
“Stay out of his way, Yamamoto,” Gokudera says as they clatter up the steps. “Don’t try to treat him any differently than any other guest. Don’t let on that we know of him, beyond his name on the guest list. Don’t let him know Juliette is here.”  
  
“You really think he’ll try something?” she asks, intrigued. On her other side, Squalo barks a short burst of laughter.  
  
“No one is as shit-for-brains as that, brat, not with the likes of us in reach,” he points out with a razor-tipped grin.  
  
Looking sour at the interruption, Gokudera nods reluctantly. “We’re going to sound him out. We’ll learn more by his reaction to perceived security than anything else. If he looks like he’s got nothing to hide, then either he doesn’t, or he’s a damned good actor.”  
  
“Simple,” Yamamoto observes.  
  
“Pussy,” Squalo corrects, and abruptly slaps Yamamoto on the back. “Later, brat. There’s a severe lack of testosterone here that is giving me the urge to punch a baby animal.”  
  
“He’s like being hit by a truck, sometimes,” Yamamoto says, rubbing at her scapula and watching his figure stride down the corridor to Xanxus’ rooms.  
  
“Yeah,” Gokudera agrees distastefully. “A loud, hairy, psychotic one with a freaky boss-complex.” Yamamoto stares at him. He blinks at her, and then glares at her slow grin. “My dedication to Tsuna is pure and true, nothing like that sick, twisted mess of violence and bloodshed between those two crazy fucks.”  
  
“Uh-huh, yeah,” Yamamoto grins, slowly shaking her head. “I didn’t say anything.”  
  
“You didn’t need to,” he mutters. “I could see it in your eyes.”  
  
“Oh yeah?” she hooks her arm through his cheerfully, and flutters her eyes up at him earnestly. “What else can you see?”  
  
He’s supposed to roll his eyes and rap her forehead or something, tell her to stop messing around, they’ve got work to do. She’ll then laugh brightly and shrug it off, casual, back-to-work. It’s how they’ve always played this game.  
  
For a moment, they just keep walking, Yamamoto’s hold on his arm a beat too long now to be casual. There’s a flutter of something unpleasantly hot and awkward in her chest, and after a while she laughs loudly and loosens her arm. But his hand comes up quick, holds her arm in place, and Yamamoto nearly stops walking in surprise.  
  
“Gokudera?” she queries, blinking. His green eyes flicker to her, then away, and he looses his hold on her arm.  
  
“Nothing,” he says gruffly. “Just thinking.”  
  
Swallowing something akin to faint disappointment and curiosity, Yamamoto pats his shoulder sympathetically. “Take a break, Gokudera. Go get a sandwich or something from the kitchen; I’ll go on ahead to the video room first.”  
  
“I’m fine,” he snaps. “We can call for food to be sent in, anyways.” And just like that, whatever strange moment there was gone. Yamamoto shrugs her consent and stops a maid in the hall to request some lunch be sent up.  
  
  
  
The Ciambino representatives arrive in the same rush as the Red Tiger dragonhead pulls up in an Aston Martin Vanquish. Gokudera and Yamamoto watch the Ciambino family hurriedly greeted and directed to their rooms while the Ninth spends a significantly longer time making nice with the Triad boss. She spots Cato Mosca among the four Ciambino men that Mario greets and leads away. His frame is taller and rangier than the bust photo had shown, and he walks with his back straight and head held high. The suit on him is bespoke, a luxury that speaks more of his part in the diamond business than his position in his family, and he carries with him a demure leather briefcase. There’s a swinging grace to his limbs that Yamamoto finds herself admiring; he must be a marvelous athlete. Two of the other men are nephews of the Ciambino don, and the last is a thin, skull-faced man known as _Il Bisturi_ , the Scalpel. He is as much of a freelance gangster as possible; his ties to the Russian mob are the worst kept secret in the business, but his prowess, both in business and brutality keeps him cautiously in good standing with the families. Yamamoto has seen pictures of his work, and is glad her job is to stay away from them.  
  
“We’re keeping him in the main house?” Yamamoto murmurs pointedly to Gokudera, who doesn’t reply. “Isn’t that risky?”  
  
He stubs his cigarette out on an empty film canister and shrugs without looking away from the monitors. “Can’t be helped. Ciambinos have always had rooms in the west wing.” And to suddenly change tradition would be suspicious, he doesn’t say. Yamamoto watches as Cato Mosca jumps from different camera feeds to another, laughing and jesting with his friends while a Vongola bellboy pushes along a luggage rack stacked high with travel bags. Mosca looks much younger in person than on paper; thirty-four years old, unmarried, with a fondness for red wines that near matches his aptitude with firearms is difficult to reconcile with the smiling man in grainy black-and-white on the screen.  
  
The phone in the video room shrills loudly, and the guard answers immediately, holding it briefly to his ear before pressing it to Gokudera.  
  
Yamamoto watches silently as Gokudera converses with the Ninth, waiting patiently until he hangs up and finally turns to her.  
  
“Juliette knows Mosca’s here,” he tells her tersely. “She’s not happy. It’s only the law of hospitality that’s keeping her from bolting.”  
  
“She doesn’t trust us to keep her safe?” she asks, frowning. Gokudera just adjusts his tie and collar.  
  
“So she says. But you tell me; you think she’s the sort of woman that does anything without considering everything?”  
  
“Should I go with you?”  
  
He waves her off distractedly and checks the time briefly. “I think Bianchi said something about you meeting her at four, which is in twenty minutes. You’d best go find her.”  
  
“I’d rather go with you,” Yamamoto pleads and follows him into the main corridor. But Gokudera just smirks at her as he takes off towards the conference rooms.  
  
“Remember,” he says, “Stay out of his way. I don’t want him speaking to you before we can sound him out.”  
  
“I’m sixteen, Daddy. I’m not a child,” Yamamoto quotes, and grins when he just flips her the bird over his shoulder.  
  
  
  
Bianchi is on the phone when Yamamoto knocks and lets herself into the suite. The older woman motions to the armchair and continues her conversation in rapid-fire Italian, too fast for Yamamoto to follow. Instead, she stretches out her legs and kicks off her flats, wiggling her toes and trying to decide what color to paint her nails. She never liked red that much, but maybe a light neutral beige or blue would be nice. Her fingernails, alas, would have to be practical and short; it wouldn’t do to hesitate in battle for fear of breaking a nail. She could buff and shine them at least though; they were kind of scuffed from chasing after that silly dog.  
  
“Apologies, Takako,” Bianchi says, smoothly switching to Japanese and sliding her phone shut. She swooped low to greet her. “I didn’t think the call would take so long. How was your day?”  
  
“Exciting,” Yamamoto laughs, and relays the story about the dog quickly. “I believe they’re using kitchen twine for a leash now, while her papa drives down to town to buy a proper chain.”  
  
“How droll,” Bianchi says, smiling. “I hope that child has learned her lesson.” She rises and crosses her room. “Speaking of lessons, I have one for you.”  
  
“You shouldn’t have,” Yamamoto protests, with a great deal of cheer and not a little bit of wariness. Lessons, she’s come to know in mafia language, often came with injuries and usually some heartache and property damage. As if reading her mind, Bianchi smirks coolly over her shoulder as she rifles through her bag.  
  
Yamamoto doesn’t startle when the small package comes flying at her head; she snags it out of the air reflexively, then stares at it.  
  
“This looks expensive,” she finally says, holding up the ring.  
  
“Oh, it’s quite,” Bianchi assures. “Custom made jewelry usually is. Careful, don’t twist the gem about too much; the catch releases a dart of curare.”  
  
“Curare?” Yamamoto blinks, and stares at the innocent blue jewel. “Like, poison Amazonian frogs curare?”  
  
The older woman smiles, pleased. “Just in case, you understand. Some times call for the use of your sword, others for a gun, but only the right times call for poison.”  
  
Yamamoto ponders this for a moment as she slips on the ring. “Thank you, Bianchi,” she says. “All the same, I hope I’ll never have to use it.”  
  
Laughing, Bianchi reaches out and touches her cheek affectionately, her fingertips cool on her face. “Neither do I, Takako. However, on the off chance, I’d rather you have it.”  
  
Yamamoto smiles and strokes the silver band. And as the light catches on its jewel, she realizes she’s seen it before. “Did you make one for Gokudera too? I’ve seen him with a similar one, only the stone’s green.”  
  
“Hm,” Bianchi murmurs, her eyebrow lifting high. “About my brother.” There’s a look of blankness on her delicate features that inexplicably puts Yamamoto in mind of her father when he caught her kissing Morimoto Kenji behind the shop during middle school. She suddenly, confusingly, wants to deny everything. “Where is he now?”  
  
“Ah,” Yamamoto says, “meeting with Juliette Fiori, I think. That was where he was last headed.”  
Frowning slightly, Bianchi tilted her head back. “And you didn’t go with him? You know I don’t mind if you have other business to attend to.”  
  
Yamamoto shrugged. “Gokudera has his own ideas about how I can help. It’s easier to just go along.” She laughs and scrunches her nose. “I think he thinks he’s protecting me, in a way.”  
  
For a long moment, Bianchi just considers her coolly from where she sits, her features obscured in the afternoon shadow. Yamamoto fidgets and debates getting up to turn on the lights.  
  
“Takako,” Gokudera’s sister says slowly, “forgive my presumption in this matter, but may I tell you something?”  
  
A little uncertainly, Yamamoto nods her assent, her crooked smile as much a front as any. It isn’t like she hasn’t been expecting some sort of confrontation like this; she’d only been hoping it’d come from Haru or Kyoko, and involve sleepovers and a metric ton of girly cocktails. Bianchi is a little scarier.  
  
“My brother may be a blind and deaf idiot to most anything besides business, but the rest of us aren’t.” Bianchi’s look pierces her, leaving no doubts as to what matters exactly are under discussion. “I know you love him, and he certainly is not indifferent to you,” she says bluntly, “furthermore, I know he has no intention of confronting you about it.”  
  
Even though it’s something Yamamoto knows, it still hurts to hear. She ducks her head to regain composure.  
  
“I’m sorry, Takako,” Bianchi continues softly. “He’s being dreadfully unfair to you. For what it’s worth, I apologize on behalf of him and our family. Hayato has never dealt well with love.” Her smile is tiny and bittersweet. “I’m afraid it is not entirely his fault; my family has rarely handled matters of the heart gracefully.”  
  
Yamamoto takes a deep breath and pastes a bland smile over her face. “It’s really not a big deal, _onee-san_ ,” she laughs, and shrugs. “I’ve known that for years. And, you know, I can handle it. It’s easier when he doesn’t really get it.”  
  
“No, it isn’t,” Bianchi sighs, giving her a piercing look. “He has to own up to his feelings and deal with them or let you go. Takako, you should say something; you can’t go on dragged behind like his shadow for his own thoughtlessness; you’ll both suffer for it. You, more than him.”  
  
“It’s nothing like that,” Yamamoto laughs, bright as brass and waving off her words. “Really, it’s totally fine. We’re totally fine. Everything’s really okay.”  
  
  
  
Everything sucked. Yamamoto legs it out of the room to flee that conversation. Her ears burn with complicated emotions- embarrassment? Shame? She doesn’t understand half of what she’s feeling right now, just… there was a time when all her problems could be solved with a good, heavy swing and the pure, simple beauty of cracking a ball to outer field, and that failing, her father’s sushi, both which she misses terribly. She quickens her stride, glad she wore jeans and sneakers today instead of skirt and heels, clearing the back door and making her way towards the lake trail.  
  
Is that how everyone sees her? Some pitiful she-creature doomed to spend her life on an unrequited love with a workaholic asshole? Which, alright, hits all the main points in this farce, but isn’t nearly as simple as it seems. Yamamoto breaths out, and slows, her long legs feeling the burn and heat under the denim. She isn’t angry, no, but agitated, dismayed. An uncomfortable feeling of having the contents of her diary skimmed through and dispassionately commented on sits heavy in the pit of her stomach; she wishes Bianchi had left matters well alone.  
  
The rustle of footsteps behind her jerks her upright; she has a half-moment of shame that she’s allowed someone to sneak up on her, and it’s only with great effort that she musters up a blank, smiling face. She turns, ready to exchange pleasantries and kindly inform whoever it is to fuck off, until she finds herself face to face with Cato Mosca’s handsome, dark face.  
  
  
The photograph hadn’t shown this, but Mosca’s eyes are a piercing gray that cuts to the quick. Yamamoto sucks in a breath and struggles to hang on to her bland smile.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she says apologetically. “I didn’t realize anyone was behind me.”  
  
In the video feeds, Cato Mosca had been smiling and genial. Here, on the half-cobble path around the lake, he looks cold and hostile and smooth as granite. Her fingers ache for Shigure Kintoki.  
  
He bows a little, curt and clean. “Signorina Yamamoto, I presume.”  
  
“Signor Mosca,” she replies cautiously. “We have not met.”  
  
“No,” he agrees, and his tone is as cool as winter in Siberia. “But I have quite looked forward to the pleasure this past week.”  
  
 _Because you want to attempt that whole murder thing again_ , Yamamoto pointedly does not say. She really should not take the bait; should just excuse herself and leave. She grins instead. “Do tell me why. I rarely live up to expectations.”  
  
“On the contrary, madame. You put rumors to shame,” he replies with the sort of gallantry that comes only in your worst enemies. “They do not do you justice.”  
  
Yamamoto laughs with an edge of hysteria and scratches her head. “Listen, are we playing the compliments game? Because I’m really terrible at that. My colleague Gokudera though, would certainly indulge you.”  
  
“Signorina,” he cuts in, brusque and steely, “forgive me. I am merely expressing my honest admiration of the courage and skill of Fiori’s murderer. I’m afraid I feel what they say of your honor though,” he drawls venomously, “is vastly exaggerated.”  
  
The startled huff of laughter bursts from her lungs; Yamamoto rocks back a little and blinks at him in confusion. “Wait a minute, what are you saying? That I killed Felice Fiori?” She chuckles and wraps her arms around herself tightly. “You killed Fiori. And tried to take us out too, which, by the way, does not make any of us like you very much. I mean, you couldn’t have called instead?”  
  
Cato Mosca’s mouth turns down into a stern frown. The expression animates his features a little, so she can see the youthful mobility she’d glimpsed earlier. He opens his mouth to speak, when Yamamoto jerks her gaze up. Gokudera is standing at the edge of the garden balustrade, looking absolutely furious. She grins apologetically and beats a hasty retreat.  
  
“Please excuse me, Signor Mosca. I’ve matters to tend to. The trail is less than two miles; it’s quite a pleasant walk. Do enjoy!” she tells him in a rush and tumble, before sprinting back towards Gokudera.  
  
“What the fuck, moron,” Gokudera hisses, his hand coming down like a vise on her shoulder. “I told you not to talk to him, Yamamoto! This is delicate shit we’re dealing with-” He shoots a quick look over his shoulder to where Mosca is watching them inscrutably from the forest path, and scowls at her.  
  
Yamamoto shrugs his hand off. “Lay off,” she says tiredly, as Bianchi’s earlier words echo in the back of her mind. “He came looking for me, okay? He thinks we killed Fiori.”  
  
Gokudera looks outraged.  
  
“I’ve been trying to keep them all in line,” he growls, “if you’ve said something to screw this all up-” but she’s sick of his bullshit. She pulls away from him and scrubs a hand through her hair.  
  
“Leave me alone, Gokudera,” she orders testily. “How the hell could I tell him anything? You certainly don’t tell me shit.”  
  
Without looking at him, she just barely refrains from running back into the house.  
  
  
  
She pleads off dinner, and instead makes herself a sandwich and takes it back to her room. Bianchi comes to knock, but Yamamoto opens the door with the phone pressed to her ear and motions for her to go without her. The older woman frowns slightly, but nods and leaves. Yamamoto sighs, presses her forehead against the cool wooden door, and dials Haru’s number.  
The time difference is by seven hours, but that just means Haru’s only getting down to business in Tokyo. Sure enough, she picks up on the second ring.  
  
“Haru here, and Haru is being productive, and Haru is certainly not procrastinating on [Hotguysandbabyanimals.com](http://www.hotguysandbabyanimals.com/),” Haru chirps in greeting and Yamamoto has to laugh, a relieved, giddy sort of giggle.  
  
“Copy me on some of the better looking ones,” she says, sinking onto her bed and pulling an overstuffed pillow onto her lap. “I’m thinking I need a change.”  
  
“Uh-oh,” Haru says mock-darkly, and there are sounds of shifting in the background. Yamamoto can practically see her friend pushing back from her desk and swinging her feet onto the nearest available surface. “Come on. Talk to me. Haru can make it all better.”  
  
“Can you, really?” Yamamoto asks, half-serious. Haru makes an affronted noise.  
  
“It’s my job, have you forgotten? Takako, you sound like you’re two clicks away from a china shop in an earthquake. It’s not often you get me on the phone like this.”  
  
There’s a sudden, almost painful rush of warmth and affection for the other girl. Yamamoto has had many friends and acquaintances in the past, but never one quite like Haru. The other girl had taken to her in the early days of their meeting, and if the initial plan was to form some sort of pre-first wives of the Mafia club, the bond’s matured and strengthened into something genuine over the years. If it weren’t for Tsuna and Gokudera, Yamamoto’d consider Haru her best friend.  
  
“It’s nothing,” Yamamoto says, and grins when the words are cut off by Haru’s snort. “Okay, it’s not nothing.”  
  
“Don’t ever try to lie to me again,” Haru says gleefully. “I’m your lawyer, remember? Alright, let’s start from the top. Who, what, where when? Why!”  
  
Yamamoto makes an abortive hand motion that no one else can see. “It’s just… Gokudera-”  
  
“When has it ever not been?”  
  
“And maybe it started with Squalo, earlier today, and then there was Bianchi, and other people- I’m not very good at this,” Yamamoto says with a self-deprecating laugh. But Haru just hmms.  
  
“Okay, let me see if I get this,” Haru sings, and it sounds like she takes a fortifying sip of whatever disgusting processed energy drink she has at her side. “Feel free to jump in anytime. Squalo makes a play on you, but mostly to piss Gokudera off, right? Annnnd Bianchi has some comment on it? And Gokudera freaks like the jealous boyfriend he totally doesn’t know he wants to be?”  
  
“You’ve got half of it,” Yamamoto marvels, laughing. “Wow, Haru. You sure you want to finish that law degree? I think you wouldn’t do half-bad picking brains for a living. Or fortune telling.”  
  
“Yes, well, I am Vongola’s all-purpose Jill-of-all-trades. And I watch a lot of K-drama.” But there’s a kindness in her joking tone that soothes Yamamoto’s nerves. Suddenly eager to have someone commiserating with her, she tells Haru about her conversation with Bianchi, Squalo’s sly attempts to rile the Storm Guardian, and Gokudera’s own inability to see past himself. Sometime in the middle of her monologue, Haru interrupts and orders her to raid the liquor cabinet (“You damn well know they stock fantastic grappa or campari or Johnny Walker in your room. Take a drink, woman, and then another for me, since I’m making do with cheap beer.”). The alcohol (a nicely aged amontillado, it turns out) makes it easier to tell Haru things like, “I’m happy, really, I’m happy all the time. I just wish I didn’t care so much” and “It’s a pity Squalo only does it to piss him off, because he’s really good in bed” which leads to a serious discussion on ex-boyfriends.  
  
When the world around her has finally turned warm and amber-lit, Yamamoto giggles and leans back against the headboard, listening to Haru rant about her current suitor’s total inability to take his foot out of his mouth.  
  
“…pretty sure he called my nose ‘fat’. He’s a total headcase, Takako,” she moans. “I don’t know how to get rid of him!”  
  
“Introduce him to Hibari,” Yamamoto suggests, wiping moisture from her eyes. Another groan from Haru.  
  
“Yeah, and get him tonfa’d? I’m cruel, but not ready to be accessory to murder, thanks,” Haru shoots back. “Anyways, why are we talking about Loser Myoji? Let’s talk more about why you’re strangely attracted to thick-brained jerks with boss-complexes.”  
  
“Because I’m a masochist,” Yamamoto says firmly, and takes another drink. “If Daddy knew, he’d be so ashamed,” she mourns.  
  
“And kick their ass, which they’d rightly deserve. Takako, listen to me,” Haru orders. Yamamoto makes an affirmative sound, though her eyes have drifted closed. “Bianchi’s got the right of it; you spoil Gokudera. You just take all his shit; when was the last time you got angry with him? Gamma, that’s when! Look, as much as he doesn’t want to see it, he’s got to deal with not just your feelings, but his own. Because he does have them, he does! Takako, don’t you dare laugh. Well whatever it is, it’s not platonic friendship, that’s for sure.”  
  
“Ha,” Yamamoto manages. “You really think so?”  
  
“Honey, that boy,” Haru says emphatically, “is incapable of seeing love if it walked up and twisted his balls. It doesn’t mean he can’t feel it though.”  
  
“So what do I do?” Yamamoto half-moans, half-chuckles. “Why is it different now? How have I regressed to middle school?”  
  
“It’s different, because he’s treating you like he does have a right to,” Haru says gently. “It’s different, because he’s leading you on, and it’s gone on so long and blatantly, that his _own sister_ is apologizing for him.”  
  
“I’ve never let it bother me before. I’ve dated other guys. He doesn’t mind,” Yamamoto protests weakly.  
  
“And yet, you still spent more time at his side than any of theirs. Takako, if he’s not going to give you a reason to stay, then maybe you should make that break. Either way, you’ve got to lay down rules,” her friend urges. “You’re not his possession. You’re his equal, in all senses, and you can very probably kick his ass; remind him of that.”  
  
Sighing, Yamamoto throws an arm over her eyes, sliding down so her head sinks into the soft, down pillows. “I guess I should.”  
  
“Always listen to Haru, for she is wiser than all you upstart guardians,” she pontificates, and gets one last chuckle out of Yamamoto. “And I love you very much, but it’s officially too-late for me even, so good night. Wow, that’s interesting to say so when it’s kind of light outside now.”  
  
“Goodnight, Haru,” Yamamoto says, heartfelt. “Thanks.”  
  
“Anytime, Takako. I believe in you!”  
  
They hang up, and Yamamoto lays quietly, holding the phone to her chest until she falls asleep.  
  
  
  
The next morning finds Yamamoto nursing a mild headache and feeling nastily dehydrated. She showers quickly and pulls on skinny jeans and a clean shirt, then goes to find Gokudera. He’s still in his room, already dressed and with the sleeves of his blue shirt rolled up. He has his Bluetooth in and is rattling off staccato Italian to the other end, while typing away at his laptop. There’s no pause at all as he glances up at her over the top of his glasses, but he does jerk his chin, meaning ‘come inside’. She dawdles in the doorway fiddling with the edge of her shirt. It’s seen her through high school and college and all the days after, and it’s the first thing she puts on her days off, when she has nothing to do except do a little shopping, grab a little coffee, eat a little (a lot) of ice cream while watching the latest Kimura Takuya drama.  
  
The sudden silence is jarring; she peeks up and sees Gokudera staring back at her, with a faint look of horror on his face.  
  
“…That’s not what you’re wearing,” he says flatly. “Come on, Baseball Chick, you’re going to swan out among the Versace and D &G junkies in that?”  
  
Yamamoto looks down at herself, then back to him and laughs. “Aw, Gokudera. I can only be me. Besides, these are APOs, and vintage shirts are in. Also?” she wiggles her foot. “Toms. I’m working the whole charity thing already.”  
  
He rolls his eyes and says something in Italian she doesn’t quite catch. “Whatever. We’re running late already; let’s go.” He closes the laptop, but not before Yamamoto catches glimpses of a photograph of Cato Mosca and Felice Fiori standing together, smiling.  
  
“Making progress?” she asks lightly. “Shouldn’t you be telling me some of this? As your partner?”  
  
“Soon,” he says gruffly, and then sneaks a look at her. He sighs abruptly as he refastens his French cuffs and shrugs on his jacket. “Let us get through this morning, and I’ll fill you in. We’re late as it is, and none of this is do-or-die shit anyways.”  
  
“Fine,” Yamamoto replies, and if she’s a tad cooler, he doesn’t seem to notice anyways.  
  
  
  
The charity event resembles an Ascot races hay show, but with distinctive Mafia style. High-level gangsters in sharp-creased pinstripes and their diamond-studded broads mince over the garden paths; it’s barely ten in the morning, but it looks like everyone has mimosas in their manicured hands and a checkbook in the other. The younger sons and daughters congregate in clusters away from their parents, looking trashy hip and affectively world-weary, cigarettes dangling from their soft, pale hands. Yamamoto’s pleased to note that her own outfit blends in quite well with their crowd as she watches the young ingénues flirt awkwardly with each other. It’s only the boldest that that dare make eye contact with her; despite her casual dress, they’ve all been schooled in who to look for and avoid.  
  
Approximately five seconds is all it takes for Gokudera to sink into his brand of cutthroat socializing; Yamamoto sends him into the crowds with a little pat on his shoulder before strolling over to make her own greetings. The Red Tiger weapons master is an old friend of Reborn and Fon’s, and she’d looked over Shigure Kintoki last time she was in Hong Kong.  
  
They’re in the middle of discussing Wei Ming’s latest acquisition (a fifteenth-century _cinquedea_ with a provenance that is rumored to include the infamous Duke Valentino) when Yamamoto catches a glimpse of Cato Mosca at the edge of her vision. Along the long marble porch of the manse, the Ciambino representatives are in deep conversation with the Ninth’s cloud guardian. Mosca though, is looking straight at her. The tall man is dressed impeccably, and looks remarkably cool in the bright sharp sunlight. He waits until he has her attention, before quirking his lips briefly and giving her a curt nod. Yamamoto blinks, because if she’s reading him right, he’s apologizing. In the next moment, he’s gone though, following his family members down past the rows of white tents and out of sight.  
  
“Cheeky son of a bitch,” Lussuria comments, slinking to her side and passing off a glass of champagne. “I like him.”  
  
“Haha, I guess he’s pretty cute,” Yamamoto agrees, smiling. “Too bad, huh?”  
  
“Oh, honey, if a little controversy is going to put you off, then I’ll gladly take him off your hands,” Lussuria assures her, and Yamamoto just giggles.  
  
“I meant, too bad our bosses will kill us first.”  
  
He just waggles his eyebrows and tosses his Mohawk. “That’s what makes up half the fun.”  
  
Just then, the D’Amico boy upsets a raffle counter set up with scuba gear at the Friends of Nature table and Yamamoto is too busy laughing and chasing after flying red tickets to think about Mosca.  
  
  
  
Yamamoto and Tsuna once talked about his hyper intuition, way back when they had just started settling into the life they’d built. What was it, exactly? How did it work? Was it reading someone cold, like those sly old fortune-telling grandmothers lining the front of Piazza Colonna in Rome? Perhaps a bit of psychic empathy was involved, could Tsuna go all Spock?  
  
The closest Tsuna could come to explaining it was asking her in turn how she knew what to pitch to whoever was at bat.  
  
“It’s like,” Tsuna said, squinting and carelessly gesturing, sloshing cloudy sake all over his hands. “It’s like, seeing a guy with a broken arm, and going ‘he jumped from a chair, tripped over a frisbee, and tumbled into the koi pond’. Chances are, like, one in a lot that he did. But you know. Always guessing right.” He sighed and put his head down on Yamamoto’s dad’s bar. “It’s not a big deal, honestly,” he mumbled as Yamamoto had hurriedly hauled him upright and towards the spare futon. “’s not perfect, but I guess it helps some.”  
  
She supposes Tsuna’s natural self-deprecation downplayed just how useful a skill like that is; in the early afternoon Felice Fiori’s widow approaches her from across the lawn, and the sight of her makes Yamamoto wish fiercely she knew who was lying. She quickly wraps up her conversation with a World Vision aid worker, and heads over to the older woman.  
  
“Signora,” she greets, loping to her side. “I did not expect to see you out here.”  
  
“Why?” Juliette demands, eyes flashing briefly. “Because that backstabbing Mosca is here as well? Well, he can grit his teeth all he wants; I’m tired of hiding behind men and walls. If he’s got one jot of sense, he’ll wait until I leave to kill me.”  
  
“Oh, madame,” Yamamoto laughs, steering her in the opposite direction of Mosca and towards Gokudera, “please don’t say that. I just meant Gokudera or I would have made sure to escort you properly. This is the first time you’ve been to this event, isn’t it?”  
  
Juliette tilts her chin up slightly, raising a slim, pale brow. “I attended with my father, before my marriage to Felice. I should say I am more familiar with these grounds than you.”  
  
Yamamoto grins. “My mistake, Signora. But today, let me be your gracious hostess for once. You were so kind to me before.”  
  
Almost fondly, or perhaps deprecatingly, Juliette squeezes her hand. “You’re very sweet,” she tells her. Yamamoto winces internally and sighs, because even though it’s not hyper, her woman’s intuition works just fine, and Juliette does not think much of her at all.  
  
The lawn party sprawls across the enormous manicured garden and the fountains have been decorated with floating lilies and glass baubles. Down the middle between the various tents and organizations are tables piled with delicate little finger foods that never run out. It culminates with an enormous chocolate fountain shaped like the ubiquitous Vongola crest. A string quartet playing something appropriately cheerful and airy sits under a striped canopy in the eastern corner. It’s in the opposite direction that Gokudera is holding court. Yamamoto spots the young leaders of the Hung Hing Triads and a representative of LexCorps clustered around him, and hears the raucous sing-song of Cantonese and laughter as they approach. Gokudera is smirking at his companions when his eyes flicker to her, and the amusement turns sour. Yamamoto smiles and tries to shrug, Juliette a patient wisp of a lady besides her, radiating calm and benevolence like a sun lamp. As they wait, he extracts himself smoothly from the conversation and strides hurriedly to them, clearly biting back a scowl.  
  
“Signora Fiori,” he greets, clipped. “Yamamoto.”  
  
“I found her wandering the grounds,” she informs him cheerfully. “Thought you’d like to show her around.”  
  
“There’s no need to spy,” Juliette says sharply. “Where could I go? Signor Mosca’s rooms?”  
  
Gokudera touches the bridge of his nose briefly, and tries desperately not to look pained. “Signora, please do not jest about that. Believe me, I am trying my very best to resolve things as they stand.”  
  
“Resolve ‘things’?” Yamamoto winces as Juliette’s tone drops in temperature. “Sir, my husband and longtime friend is dead, because of that murderer who cares for naught but filthy blood diamonds,” Juliette enunciates with cold crispness, her back gone ramrod straight. “I came to you in good faith that I would have your protection and assistance against that backstabbing thug. Instead, the week is not out but you have invited him into your very home, welcoming him as an honored guest. This is no resolution, Signor Gokudera.”  
  
The look on his face is classic; Yamamoto tries to hold back a grin at the mixture of appalled horror and anger. There is no greater insult, after all, than insulting Gokudera’s word.  
  
“Lady,” Gokudera says flatly, clearly at the end of his patience. “I’ve got my men stealing police reports and hacking international counter-intelligence organizations for you. The least you can do is trust me to do my fucking job.”  
  
“You’re feeling blunt today,” Yamamoto quips, “Maybe let me show her around instead.”  
  
“Back to her quarters,” Gokudera mutters under his breath, though clearly, Juliette hears it and narrows her eyes. “Forgive me, madame. I am being impertinent today. Let me introduce you to my sister; I guarantee you she is much more pleasant a companion than I. If you’ll excuse us for a moment.” Bianchi is over by the fountain in conversation, but she catches Gokudera’s motion immediately, and casually steers her companions towards them.  
  
Gokudera beckons Yamamoto to follow him as he goes a short distance away, close to the hedges.  
  
“I last saw Cato with Visconti and the rest of the Ciambino,” Yamamoto begins. “About twenty minutes ago. They went inside.”  
  
“Yes, Tonino said he’d meet with them,” Gokudera agrees, shaking out and lighting a cigarette. “I tried to get into the talks, but the Ninth wants to keep me on the diamonds, which aren’t business matters we have with the Ciambino. At least Mosca still doesn’t know Juliette’s here. God, what a mess.”  
  
“Some vacation, huh?” Yamamoto laughs quietly. “Gokudera, what’s going on?”  
  
He pauses to light up and glances over to where Juliette is chattering politely with his sister. “The police reports are interesting,” he says, low and quick. “Fiori and Martinelli died around two in the afternoon. They found a scorched orange Fiat, unregistered, in the driveway, no license plates, no identification.”  
  
Yamamoto frowns. “The same car tailing us,” she clarifies. “So the two attacks are connected; they went after them after we got away?”  
  
“Looks like it. They also never got Juliette’s statement, only noted that Fiori’s wife was missing, along with an Audi from the garage. She’s actually one of the top suspects of the case.”  
  
“It sounds very careless of her,” Yamamoto notes.  
  
“And it seems,” Gokudera continues, “that Cato Mosca appeared at the scene after the police arrived. I’ve read his statement; he was extremely circumspect about his reasons for being there, and refused to be questioned without his lawyer.”  
  
“Aha,” Yamamoto laughs. “This is like a murder mystery. So, Detective Conan, who did it?”  
  
Gokudera blows out a thin stream of smoke and glares. “It’s not a game, Yamamoto.”  
  
It’s a dig that Yamamoto does not appreciate. Her smile turns a little brittle as she tells him pleasantly, “You needn’t tell me to take my job seriously, Gokudera. I face enough skeptics as is; I don’t need any knocks from my best friend.”  
  
A flash of contrition crosses his features briefly before he sighs and a veil of smoke clouds his features. “Whatever. You know better than to provoke me when I’m like this,” he says gruffly. It’s the closest to an apology she’s going to get, so she shrugs and takes it.  
  
“I can stay with her the rest of the afternoon, if you’d prefer to do some of Tsuna’s business,” she suggests, but he just shakes his head.  
  
“Go ahead,” he waves. “I’ll stay with her. This is all ending soon anyways.” He drops the cigarette and grinds it under his heel into the perfect, manicured lawn. True enough, the guests have slowly begun to disperse, the tables in disarray. Soon, the caterers will begin taking away the empty and soiled tables; already, the ballroom is being tweaked to perfection for tonight’s ball.  
  
“If you say so,” she accedes, then asks brightly. “So, blue dress, or blue dress?”  
  
“My sister’s here, isn’t she? Go ask her; I trust her to keep you out of something truly abominable,” he replies with a small crack of a smile. _Boy_ , she thinks wryly and taking her leave, _she has a whole extra luggage of not-abominable_.  
  
“Get beautiful,” he calls as she trudges across the lawn. “I’ll see you tonight.”  
  
Only from Gokudera, Yamamoto sighs, could something like that sound like an honest-to-God order rather than flirtation.  
  
  
  
She finishes her shower and towels off before unzipping the garment bag for her dress. The first time she tried it on, she’d just stared in the mirror and laughed incredulously, because it’s definitely not blue. Instead, it is pure white and ends just above her knees. The sleeves are slashed and high cut, framing a neckline that plunges to the top of her belly. The overall effect is simple yet effective.  
  
“Bianchi, this is,” she’d blinked, looking from the dress to the woman. With a smile, Bianchi nodded to her.  
  
“This one, Takako.” She had winked solemnly. “Trust me.”  
  
Now, Yamamoto pulls her nice set of underwear (La Perla, because Haru refuses to let her attend these functions in cheap wholesale cotton from Daiso) and lifts the dress off the hanger. It’s not her usual style: low where her previous dresses were high, high where the others were low. It’s not even that she’s a tomboy more comfortable in tank tops than halters; she’s had her days of club-hopping in her brief stint playing pro-ball. Since the day she joined the Vongola as an official member of Tsuna’s inner circle though, she’s tried to maintain her image as a clean cut professional. Her wardrobe, already simple to begin with, was augmented with beautifully tailored suits and classy, if ordinary dresses.  
  
This dress though, is anything but ordinary.  
  
Yamamoto reaches out and trails a hand down the smooth, slippery material, and feels a tiny smile creep over her face.  
  
  
When Bianchi, already dressed in a deep, dusk blue gown, ushers her into her bathroom to fix her make up, she takes a moment to critically eye her, up and down, before smiling with that honeyed lassitude of approval.  
  
“Tonight, I am your Pygmalion,” Bianchi tells her, smoothing down her clean, fluffy hair. “There will be no man to resist you, and the rest of us women shall bite our tongues with envy.”  
  
“That sounds like a little more bloodshed than optimal, at a charity event,” Yamamoto points out.  
  
Bianchi shrugs eloquently with one shoulder, gesturing with her comb. “Beh. We are Italian; we love a little stirred blood.”  
  
Laughing, Yamamoto obediently sits and allows Bianchi to fuss with her hair.  
  
“ _Ciao, bella_ ,” she murmurs wryly, a hand touching her cheek gently.  
  
“ _Grazie_ ,” Yamamoto laughs in reply, and tilts her chin up as Bianchi begins to apply primer.

 

The gala has always been the central event of the charity event. If the day’s activities are the Ascot races, then the evening is the Met Gala of the Underworld. The Louis Quatorze glitz, gold Baroque trim and gilt-edge mirrors line the halls of the ballroom. The giant floor to ceiling glass windows are levered open to let the heat of the crowd out; guests strolling in from the guesthouse can hear the chatter and soft clink of glasses floating across the lawn in the cool night air.  
  
On a small stage back against the windows, a band plays, the soft strains of music a contented undermurmur to the crowd. Yamamoto pauses and taps her Manolos before grinning; it’s a sweet, sly rendering of the theme song from _Porco Rosso_. She likes the Ninth’s taste in movies.  
Yamamoto’s brought out of her perusal when Bianchi touches her shoulder briefly; Ganauche, the Ninth’s Thunder Guardian is smiling as he approaches, looking as rakish and tousled as ever in his spotless Armani.  
  
“Bianchi, beautiful as always,” he says with a laugh. “But Takako, tonight you leave me speechless.”  
  
She laughs, and remembers not to pick at the hem of her skirt, which feels too light. “Thanks; I’m pretty surprised myself.”  
  
His warm smile wrinkles the fine, ageing lines around his eyes. With a graceful step, he makes a little bow and flourish. “Do I have the honor of accompanying two such exquisite beauties into the ball?”  
  
With a little chuckle, Bianchi takes his right arm, and Yamamoto carefully sets her fingers lightly into the crook of his left, and they descend the curved staircase to the floor. She chooses to zone out of the conversation Ganauche and Bianchi are having over baking; between the two of them, the Vongola kitchens are never empty, piled between the sweetest home-made macarons, the deadliest nightshade, and everything in between.  
  
Tonight the ballroom has been transformed into an elegant spread of luxury and grandeur that walks perfectly the fine line between taste and vulgarity. Strings of crystals wink and gleam across the high ceilings, trailing from chandelier to chandelier like fragile morning spider webs. Long, cream damask-draped tables formed a wide semi-arc to the sides of the stage; the enclosed dance floor is filled with guests chatting leisurely, champagne at their fingertips. Half of her wishes she’d brought her camera; Haru and Kyoko would love to see mafia high-fashion at its best, scads of de la Renta, Lanvin, Valentino, and Galliano everywhere one looks. For purposes of discretion though, cameras are generally discouraged at these inter-organization functions. She catches sight of Lussuria hassling some muscled boy next to the drinks, and laughs when he catches sigh of her, and his eyebrows climb up and he gives her a thumbs up.  
  
When Yamamoto was very young, before her mother had died, she’d dreamed of attending Barbie-doll parties like these, everyone beautiful and glamorous and dancing with their own Prince Charmings. There’s a picture of her in one of the dusty baby albums in her room; she’s four, in the frothiest, tulle-ed, beribboned monstrosity of a pepto-bismal pink a distant relative had brought back for her from the United States. It’s too big for her, and the v-neck sags off her thin shoulders; her hair, unmanageable even then, is stuck with wrinkled stickers of hearts and Doraemon. Her mother’s glossy beige pumps dangle from her toes. In one hand, she’s clutching her dad’s shoulder, in the other she’s waving a plastic pearl-stranded purse. Her mother had taken the picture right as the cheap plastic emerald clasp on the purse popped her dad under the chin. Yamamoto’s baby face is open mouthed in delight, eyes creased into lash-fringed lines. Her mother had written in close, tightly even characters, ‘The Princess Takako, firmly rejecting her devoted suitor’s passionate bid for a waltz’ under the picture. The bruise had darkened her dad’s chin for almost a week, about as long as Yamamoto refused to wear anything else but that awful pink dress. There are other pictures too, including one where she’s strutting around with some fake hairpiece stuffed down the front, but it’s the first one with its dry, funny caption that she recalls as she smiles and greets various guests. Kids and criminals, playing dress up for Mafia royalty. Dryly, she thinks at least she’s better dressed this time around.  
  
“Yamamoto,” an entirely too familiar voice says from behind. She turns to face Gokudera in his tuxedo, hair slicked back in a silver wash. He’s staring at her with a faintly blank expression; Yamamoto can practically hear the gears in his head whirring: appropriate hair, check, appropriate make up, check, appropriate dress and shoes, check, appropriate game face, check.  
  
“Well?” Bianchi asks, holding a delicate mask to the lower half of her face. “Does she pass judgment?” Her dry tone of voice so clearly says it’s none of his damn business anyways, it stains Gokudera’s cheek bones a little red.  
  
“You look very nice,” he tells Yamamoto crisply, in his formal, over polite way.  
  
“Oh, brother,” Ganauche sighs. “It’s no wonder you’re single.”  
  
“That’s because he’ll never find a woman able to deal with half of what I put up with daily,” Yamamoto jests, grinning and moving to Gokudera’s side. He automatically offers her his arm, less of chivalry and more of habit. She takes it, and he leads her to their table at the front.  
  
“I do mean it,” he says brusquely, not quite meeting her eyes. “The dress suits you quite well.”  
  
“Well thank you, Gokudera,” Yamamoto replies, pleased. He catches her eye and briefly, smiles. They amble across the polished floor as he fills her in on their objectives tonight, finishing with a turn back into the Fiori business.  
  
“It seems,” Gokudera tells her in a low voice, “that there is a shipment of diamonds missing.”  
  
A slight pucker on her brows, Yamamoto quickly glances at Cato Mosca, seated on the far side of the ballroom, and meets Gokudera’s eyes. “How do you know?”  
  
His eyes travel restlessly around the ballroom, never resting on anyone overlong, but his words are all for her. “There’s a receipt in Fiori’s file about a case of diamonds that are missing from his latest inventory.”  
  
“A case?” Yamamoto echoed.  
  
“Certainly not a tube of toothpaste,” Gokudera agreed. “It’s not in that villa in Tuscany, and it never reached its intended destination in Zurich. So, where is it?”  
  
“I could buy four houses with a case of diamonds,” Yamamoto replies distantly, and grins when he glares at her. “Suppose it’s Juliette or Cato then,” she patiently says, then stops. “So, possibly, they are here, on this estate,” she clarifies. “Just an entire case of raw, beautiful diamonds.”  
  
“Cut, actually,” Gokudera corrects. “They run the diamonds through a couple well-greased gem dealers in Tunisia, then east to Sicily, where Fiori sends them along to Mosca, who has them lasered with PIN numbers and distributed to a couple reliable fences. They’ve been splitting profit, seventy-thirty.”  
  
“Nice,” she whistles, mind awhirl. Diamonds she never yearned for, but like anyone else, she enjoys the occasional peek through the designer jewelry store windows and wistfully wonders if she’ll ever have enough money to buy a maddeningly gaudy diamond-studded ring. To suddenly realize that hundreds, possibly thousands, of diamonds may be in such close quarters, and quite unaccounted for… It is a little daunting, unquestionably exhilarating. “So, what do we do?”

  
His mouth slants down and he drinks the wine in front of him. “I need to talk to Mosca,” he says. “The diamonds have to end with him at some point. He’s the one with the laser.”  
  
“And Juliette?” Yamamoto presses.  
  
He looks distempered. “Logically, she has to have them. I’ve got nothing though.”  
  
They’re interrupted by the opening speech; the Ninth looking dapper in his fine black tux, his guardians Nougat and Visconti flanking his sides. He looks in good spirits tonight, sprightly where earlier in the week he’d seemed weary.  
  
His speech is brief and welcoming, and he toasts his guests before ceding the stage to the band. As the music picks up, the caterers move in with ruthless efficiency, delivering appetizers like the world’s greatest culinary army. Gokudera and Yamamoto exchange pleasantries with their table; their companions are a varied mixture of advisors from the top echelons of different families and organizations, including il Bisturi from the Ciambino. Yamamoto suspects Gokudera bribed or threatened whoever arranged the seating for the match up; she recognizes a couple faces he’s been meaning to corner.  
  
Despite that, dinner conversation is light; Yamamoto’s seated next to Mr. Hagen, representing an old friend of the family, who is convinced she should come liaise in New York. They spend most of the first and second courses cheerily trash talking each others’ Major League teams (Yamamoto for the Dodgers; Mr. Hagen, naturally, the Yankees) before settling into a serious discussion about last year’s draft. She’s vaguely aware of Gokudera being mildly annoyed with her for taking up Mr. Hagen’s attention, but as he’s juggling three different conversations all at once anyways, he’ll probably appreciate it later anyways when she sets them up for cigarettes and coffee.  
  
It isn’t until the dessert course that the talk at the table catches her attention. Or rather, Gokudera stiffens besides her infinitesimally, and her eyes and ears respond.  
  
“The supply line’s halted, but intact, I hear. Fiori knew what he was doing when he ran his business,” a lawyerly sort of man is saying. He’s a representative of a Russian mob based out of London dealing in gambling, racketeering, and a healthy dose of human trafficking. The Vongola doesn’t like his group, but Yamamoto appreciates the irony of their substantial donation to UNICEF earlier in the afternoon. Her eyes flicker to Gokudera briefly, and he shakes his head, just perceptibly. “How long that holds, is anyone’s guess. It’ll fall apart soon enough, if they can’t finish executing the will,” the mobster finishes.  
  
“The sole benefactress is missing, isn’t she? His wife Juliette,” il Bisturi offers in a vaguely interested, mostly idle tone.  
  
Gokudera looks at him steadily. “Mr. Mortenson, you seem quite certain of that.”  
  
Viktor ‘Il Bisturi’ Mortenson, all skull-face and slick light hair, leans back deliberately and smiles, a grim upwards slash of colorless lips. “It is my job to be so.”  
  
Gokudera just barely refrains from glaring at him. Yamamoto plasters her blandest smile on and slides her hand to his knee under the table, giving it a firm shake. His eyes light on her briefly, but his frame relaxes after a moment.  
  
“I envy your connections, then,” Gokudera replies, his voice holding no shadow of the displeasure he is certainly feeling. “Care to share?”  
  
Mr. Mortenson and the others at their table laugh politely. “Of course, Signor. As long as you tell me how you do so well in Abu Dhabi,” he answers.  
  
“Not a chance,” Gokudera shoots back with a toothy grin. Mr. Mortenson laughs lightly and spreads his palms in a wry gesture. The movement pulls his French cuffs back, and Yamamoto catches sight of the dull black ink edging down the thin, sharp lines of his wrist. His pale eyes meets hers briefly, and then he smiles and shifts his sleeves subtly to hide them. Yamamoto holds his look a moment longer before breaking into a wide grin and turning her attention back to her dessert.  
  
The chatter around them grows, and soon afterwards, half their table is empty, their guests mingling and leading out on the dance floor. Gokudera stays in deep discussion with Mr. Mortenson and the Luthor representative about some obscure socio-political religious debate, so Yamamoto gladly accedes to Mr. Hagen’s offer for a turn about the ballroom.  
  
He is a perfect gentleman, hand positioned firmly but respectfully at her back, leading gently but confidently. Yamamoto tells him about her princess picture, and is pleased to hear him laugh with genuine amusement. Conversation is easy to maintain as they sway to a bluesy Sinatra tune, and Yamamoto does her part as Gokudera’s partner. By the time Schnitten Brabanters, her ninth generation counterpart, cuts in for a dance, Mr. Hagen’s mind is already well on the Cayman affairs she knows Gokudera wants to negotiate with him.  
  
The older Rain Guardian just raises a sardonic brow as he smoothly takes his place. “You are the secret weapon none of them ever see coming, aren’t you?” he asks dryly. She laughs and leans in with a big, cheerful grin.  
  
“I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, though her eyes clearly betray her humor. “Though I do carry a big sword.”  
  
“That’s us,” he sighs, but his grim mouth quirks slightly, pushing the massive scar on his cheek crooked. “The brainless muscle.”  
  
She enjoys dancing with Schnitten, who is quiet and reserved, but is fond of her nevertheless. At the end of two dances, he gracefully bows out to Gokudera, who takes over with the practiced ease of familiarity.  
  
“Thank you,” he tells her as they turn with the music. “Mr. Hagen seems very much in favor of our proposal. He likes you; I’ll have Tsuna include you on the committee.”  
  
“Sure,” she agrees. “I like him too; he’s a cool guy.” He rolls his eyes, leads her expertly around a flustered couple of giddy teens. Yamamoto enjoys this more than she should, the press of his hand against her back, the flawless interchange of steps. Even though he insists on talking shop, she can’t help leaning just a tad closer, close enough to feel the heat of him, just this shade of warm.  
  
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Bianchi and Ganauche near the bandstand, leaning over to murmur something to a young woman with curled hair and toffee colored skin. Then, perplexedly, Bianchi catches Yamamoto’s eye and grins.  
  
The music ends, and the woman with curly hair steps up to the microphone. Before the dancers can disperse, the band starts again, a slow, jazzy romance. Yamamoto swallows her nervous giggle, but Gokudera doesn’t seem bothered. He cocks an eyebrow at her, and courteously draws her in closer to him. This close, there doesn’t seem to be any need for words; Gokudera’s stopped talking. Yamamoto’s stopped laughing. Only the nearness of each other, and the rapid beating of her heart marks the tempo. The woman is crooning [You go to my head, you go to my head](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmV5oThSwK4) and Yamamoto can only understand all too well. At this distance, everything seems a little fuzzy; the feel of smooth wool under her fingers doesn’t ground her as much against the heady, giddy sensation of a girl with a crush and too much champagne. In a perfect world—in _her_ perfect world, they have done this a hundred times, together, alone. Her cheek brushing his, his hand clasping hers to his shoulder, swaying in perfect, drunken motion; a thousand sensations that feel like stepping into the roles meant for them. When the song comes to its end, she feels like no time and an eternity has passed.  
  
Against her will, because she doesn’t want to break this strange bubble of intimacy, Yamamoto sighs quietly, not wanting to step away. “Gokudera,” she says. “I-”  
  
“I should go,” he cuts her off quietly, not meeting her eyes; his gaze is distant, directed at the far edges of the ballroom. For a moment, Yamamoto feels like an utter fool, but she musters up a smile.  
  
“Yeah,” she agrees. “Get back to work.” She turns away, and misses the flicker of wistful disappointment that crosses her partner’s face.  
  
  
  
Four dances and two partners later, Yamamoto wanders out to one of the balconies, where the air outside is significantly cooler and fresher. She’s glad for a moment of peace and relative solitude; she still hasn’t shaken off completely that dance with Gokudera. Her last dance partner politely stays long enough to hand her champagne and to chat briefly about rising stocks before taking the arrival of Cato Mosca on the balcony to excuse himself.  
  
Yamamoto smiles blandly, because it’s the only thing to do as Mosca joins her, a formal distance away. He’s stiff and straight, smooth and somber. In the night, his white tux is a painfully beautiful contrast to his dark, shadowed skin. Her eyes flicker past him, wondering if Gokudera will run interference, but he’s deep in conversation with Mr. Hagen. _Might as well_ , she thinks.  
  
“Signorina Yamamoto,” Mosca greets her politely. “I wanted to offer my apologies for my behavior yesterday afternoon.” Now that he isn’t glaring at her, he looks young and rather sincere. “I detest going into situations ill-informed, and yet I grievously made that exact error when addressing you.”  
  
“Signor Mosca,” Yamamoto laughs. “Have you decided that the Vongola is innocent?” Briefly, the man’s face steels over.  
  
“No,” he answers coolly. “But I have taken your words into account. I only know that waters may run deeper than I’d thought.”  
  
The glass in her hand doesn’t hold enough alcohol to fuel this conversation, she thinks with a sigh. She drinks the rest of it, and leaves the glass on the floor.  
  
“My people think you did it, you think my people did,” she tells him as she straightens, smiling. “And both of us, utterly convinced of our own innocence. We’re stuck, aren’t we?”  
  
Mosca snorts quietly, and a faint smile tugs his lips up. “It would certainly end sooner if one of us were to confess.”  
  
“But, I would be lying,” Yamamoto states.  
  
“And so would I,” Mosca affirms quietly. His expression darkens, and his lips thin. “Believe me, the last thing I wanted to see was Felice dead.”  
  
“We did not like him,” she says bluntly, “But we liked him alive. He was better that way.”  
  
“You didn’t have to like him,” he shoots back. “Diamonds aside, Felice did not go wrong. He was a good man.”  
  
“Blood diamonds are pretty serious in and of themselves,” she points out. “It’s not like the business is a minor sin to be confessed on a Sunday and done with.”  
  
Cato Mosca levels an unreadable, stony look at her, and after an indeterminable stretch of silence, says very mutedly, “He was only doing it as a favor to me.”  
  
Tsuna would be able to judge this man, Yamamoto thinks to herself. She can only wonder of the strange grief sunk in the lines of his body, but dares not ask why.  
  
“If you don’t mind me asking,” she says carefully, “Why did you think it was us?”  
  
The full attention of Cato Mosca rests on her again; Yamamoto doesn’t yield easily, but the intensity of his gaze unnerves her so that she can hear her own heart pounding. He smiles, a cool, wry expression and smoothly counts off his fingers.  
  
“The last strangers to see Felice Fiori and Giuseppe Martinelli, you Vongola. The major conflict of interest in Felice’s life, with you, the Vongola. Not only are you Vongola, you are the famed Rain Guardian, famed hitman of your famiglia.” He cocks his head, an eyebrow raised in sardonic humor. “Tell me, Vongola, how do I frame my suspicions?”  
  
Laughing, Yamamoto folds her arms loosely around herself. “Had it been a hit,” she tells him with twinkling eyes and just a slip of challenge, “You would hardly have known I was there.”  
Mosca’s returning smile is more a smirk, and his eyes glitter with a daring arrogance. “You are implying I am not good at my job.” They are both finding this exchange far too amusing.  
  
“But I am better at mine, Signor,” Yamamoto drawls with deliberate honey, tilting her head and letting her grin grow wide and indolent. There’s an electric presence in the air between them; she can feel her skin tightening and her scalp prickling as they hold each other’s gazes. He is closer now, as intent on her as she is on him, his dark unreadable eyes glittering in the thrown-yellow light from inside. Yamamoto feels like when the moment snaps-  
  
“Voi, scum,” a voice growls tersely. “Back off.” The tip of Squalo’s blade hand is a hairbreadth away from Mosca’s throat.  
  
“Squalo,” she utters, looking over to where the fiercely glaring man has appeared besides them. The assassin barely even glances at her and Yamamoto, thrown off rhythm, tries to laugh it off. “Haha, everything’s okay.” Across from her, Cato Mosca is completely still, but his expression is shuttered and stoic. Squalo doesn’t move.  
  
“Don’t come near her again,” Squalo orders, the words eliciting just a spark of challenge and threat.  
  
“The lady and I were merely talking,” Mosca informs him icily, and Yamamoto has to give him points for being able to talk back coherently to a pissed-off Squalo. “Not all Vongola, fortunately, are as reactionary as some.”  
  
“But most,” cuts in Gokudera’s just as cool tone, “know better than to speak to persons under investigation.” He catches Yamamoto’s eyes and holds her stare.  
  
Mosca barks a humorless laugh. “And you Vongola are running this investigation, I presume?” He sneers, haughty even with a blade poised over his jugular. “You are hardly disinterested third parties. Who’s to say you won’t take this opportunity to force your hands?”  
  
Gokudera steps out of the doorway. “You would rather Mr. Mortenson, Mr. Mosca? You know as well as I your brother is happier dead than ceding to him.” He comes to a stop before Mosca. “Don’t question my integrity again, Ciambino.”  
  
Mosca falls quiet, but Yamamoto’s brain has whited out. Mr. Mortenson? Brother? Squalo doesn’t look surprised.  
  
“If you know that,” Mosca replies quietly, “Then you must know I can’t have killed him. I loved him.”  
  
“He was your half brother, wasn’t he?” Gokudera drawls. “Your father didn’t care much for you.”  
  
“Felice was not like his father,” Mosca says sharply. “He treated me no less than a full-blooded brother. If only for that, I would never have hurt him.”  
  
The noise from the party seems oddly dulled and gentle in the background; Gokudera tilts his chin slightly, and regards Squalo’s prisoner with a gimlet eye. She can’t tell what he’s thinking, though it’s easy enough to read his faint dissatisfaction.  
  
“We shall see,” Gokudera finally says simply. “If you are what you say, then there is little enough to fear from us. Good evening, Signor Mosca.” He makes a cold, curt motion and Squalo moves liquidly away, his blade disappearing silently. It must rankle the Varia to follow his orders, Yamamoto thinks faintly, but they all knew how to present a united front. The swordsman watches, hawk-eyed and silent as Mosca smoothes his lapels and straightens his cuffs, deliberately calm, before inclining his head formally and returning inside. Then, both men’s stares swivel to Yamamoto.  
  
“Oi,” Squalo starts, scowling. “We don’t fucking play with prey.”  
  
“ _Squalo_ ,” Gokudera cuts in, sharp and hard. It’s a tone that brooks no argument, and though Squalo looks put off by the dismissal, he for once leaves without comment. The balcony suddenly feels too small and cold. Yamamoto folds her arms and feels her smile crack around the edges.  
  
“Brother, huh?” she asks, lightly. “Gee, wonder when I would’ve found out.”  
  
“You didn’t need to know,” Gokudera says dismissively, his stare rests angry and heavy on her. “I told you not to talk to him.”  
  
“Yes, well,” she murmurs, “Forgive me if I’m not properly contrite. I have other thoughts on my mind at the moment, such as, when did my partner start keeping information from me?”  
  
“You’re talking nonsense,” Gokudera bristles, looking pissed to be pushed into a different conversation. It does nothing to allay Yamamoto’s rising anger and incredulity.  
  
“You deliberately didn’t tell me all you knew,” Yamamoto says slowly. “You knew Mosca was related to Fiori, and you didn’t think that was important?”  
  
“As I said, I had suspicions, Yamamoto,” Gokudera growls. “I’m not going to act without confirmation of my theories. There was no point in telling you what I wasn’t sure of myself.”  
  
“No, Hayato,” Yamamoto snaps, using his name in a fit of frustration. She can feel anger pulling her spine back in a taut line and gathering strength along the muscles in her arm. “There is a point, and the truth is, you can’t remember I’m your _partner_ , not one of your fucking pawns.”  
  
She doesn’t bother to wait for his reply, but storms off the balcony, barely having enough presence of mind to keep a grimaced smile on her face as she cut straight across the ballroom.  
  
“Bella,” Bianchi calls from her right, “what’s wrong?”  
  
Yamamoto meets her concerned gaze briefly and manages to flash her the rictus of a smile before ducking her head and racing as fast as she can down the hall, kicking off her shoes as soon as she is out of sight like some depressing modern Cinderella.  
  
“Yamamoto,” Gokudera calls from behind tersely. “We’re not finished.”  
  
“I’m done,” she replies blandly angry. “I suggest we continue this conversation another time. You won’t like me right now.”  
  
“Bullshit,” he growls, sounding closer now. Yamamoto lengthens and speeds up her strides, practically runs down the hallway to her door. “We’re going to settle your problem right now, before it interferes with our job.”  
  
“Oh, so now it’s _our_ job and _my_ problem,” Yamamoto chortles with thick fury, even as her anger is betraying itself in her trembling fingers that work the door knob. With a shove, she flings the door open and slams into the room. “Go away, Gokudera.”  
  
He quietly closes the door behind himself, as always considerate of appearances, ruined as they may be by now. With a sudden burning rush, Yamamoto longs for the careless, explosive Gokudera of old, who wouldn’t give a fuck about throwing tantrums in front of rich snobs. “ _What_ ,” he hisses as he turns to face her, “ _is your problem_?”  
  
Yamamoto throws her shoe at him, and then immediately winces because they’re Manolos, and don’t deserve that sort of mistreatment. “ _How_ do you not understand that it’s as much yours as mine?” she pleads, ignoring his outraged expression. “I am your partner, and you’ve forgotten that.”  
  
“Of course you’re my partner,” Gokudera snaps irritably. “How the hell could I forget? You’re everywhere I am, doing your whole hitman thing.”  
  
“It’s a man’s world, Gokudera!” she finally shouts at him. “It’s a man’s world, and I’m only a woman, who swings a sword. People look at you and they see,” she gestures wildly. “Storm Guardian. _Consigliere_. Tsuna’s right–hand man and confidante. All they see in me is a pretty face and a pair of breasts, with a pretty sharp knife, probably used in the kitchen. And I’ve played that part to your asking, Hayato,” Yamamoto says, her own viciousness surprising her. “I’ve acted like the mindless, weak bimbo to your clever, dangerous politician, and done so willingly, because I trusted you to treat me as I deserved. You are my best friend; you are the only one whose opinion matters to me. But if you’re not going to treat me like a partner and equal, then who will?”  
  
“I’m trying to protect you,” he snaps. “You don’t need to know everything, not until I can confirm everything.”  
  
“No, no,” Yamamoto shouts. “No, that’s _bullshit_. You’re not protecting anything. You don’t need to protect me. You need to _trust_ me.” He just stares like he can’t quite grasp her meaning.  
  
She’s so furious- and when was the last time she felt like this?- so frustrated and raging that her entire body is wracked with shaking, and she needs to not look at him. She makes for the balcony.  
  
“Where are you going?” Gokudera asks sharply behind her, but she ignores him, because if her pressed lips part, she’s afraid she won’t stop screaming. The heavy tumblers of the balcony door click open, but suddenly, a hand covers hers and she’s spun around and shoved against the glass. Gokudera is close and in her face, his hands digging into her shoulder in a bruising hold. His eyes have lost all gray and are the brilliant, peridot-green that means he’s about to lose his shit. She wants to see him go mad.  
  
“Let me go,” she manages through clenched teeth, trying not to shake and shout. _You asshole_ , she rages silently. _You complete and utter jerk_.  
  
“Not until you’re logical again,” he retorts just as curtly.  
  
“I cannot believe you are talking to me like this,” Yamamoto cries, the disbelieving laugh bubbling out of her and mingling with the great huffs of fury in her chest. “When have I _not_ been reasonable, Gokudera Hayato, I want you to explain to me _exactly that_. We have been partners for an _entire decade_ ,” she snarls, “I’ve never questioned you. I’ve never humiliated you. I trusted you to think of me as well as I did you. Apparently I’m the one played for a fool in this mockup of a friendship. Fuck you very much, Hayato. Let me go.”  
  
“Are you done?” he asks, and it only makes Yamamoto crazier.  
  
“You don’t even know, do you?” she growls and yanks her arms out of his grasp. “You are the one person, the only one, who can make me this angry.” As soon as she says them, the truth of those words hit her like a five-ton truck, leaves her feeling sad and heavy. She doesn’t look at him, doesn’t want him to see her like this, angry and vulnerable and completely unable to laugh it all off. “What am I, Gokudera?” she pleads. “Am I your partner? Am I your underling? Your girlfriend? I can’t be all three, so please tell me. I can’t work with you like this.”  
  
“You think you’re the only one?” he retorts quietly, but with that special brand of unthinking venom he does so well. “You drive me insane, every time you say something stupid, flounce around in your shirts and sweats, every single fucking time you laugh. I’m thinking, what is she doing? How should I feel? I don’t know fuck all what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what you want _me_ to do.”  
  
For a moment, Yamamoto can’t even breathe; she’s trying to process what exactly he’s just told her. Even now, there is an inappropriate burst of confused pleasure at his confession, but it’s wiped out as the rest of his words register. Her fury comes back full force, and her voice cracks with raw hurt and anger. “I could hit you,” she says, wavering. “How dare you, Gokudera.” And, furious, she shoves him hard, watches as he awkwardly catches himself on the table. She can barely see through the haze of emotions. “If you can’t handle your _attraction_ to me,” she manages, just barely keeping from choking on the words, “it’s not my fault.”  
  
She has never wanted to cry more in her life. “You need to get the fuck out of here.”  
  
“Yamamoto-”  
  
“ _Get out_ ,” she shouts raggedly, eyes screwed tight against the fury and vulnerability and despair.  
  
There is a moment of utter, awful silence. And then Gokudera takes a step back, and another. Yamamoto doesn’t care; she waits until the door closes behind him, and then sags against the far wall, completely drained of energy. Her head falls forward into her hands, and she doesn’t know if the dry gasping noises are sobs or laughs.  
  
A sudden bang jolts her upright again, and she has barely enough time to register Gokudera storming towards her before he’s crowding her up against the wall and crushing his lips to hers, teeth clacking painfully together.  
  
“Mmrf!”  
  
Pure reaction and shock makes Yamamoto shove Gokudera back violently, her eyes gone huge. “What are you doing?!”  
  
Gokudera looks wild, and terrified, and determined. “This is what you want, right?” he demands, hands framing either side of her face. “Because you love me.”  
  
Yamamoto shakes her head, mouthing ‘no,’ thinking, ‘that’s not how it works at all’, but she can’t speak it because behind Gokudera’s green-glass eyes is fear and desperation. He doesn’t know what he’s saying, but he’s kissing her again, harsh, determined pressure of lip on lip, teeth against teeth.  
  
“No,” she manages, fingers flexing against the crumpled lapels of his suit and forcing him back. “Don’t do this,” she pleads, because her heart is breaking somewhere between her ribcages and the shards are slicing straight through her.  
  
“Why not?” he’s angry and scared. Yamamoto can feel the violent shaking of his hands where they’re buried in her hair, or maybe that’s herself. “We do this now, and it ends, right? So let’s get it over with.”  
  
His words boil up a fierce, sickening feeling in her, and she stares at him in incredulity.  
  
“You’re not serious,” she says, her voice flat with surprise.  
  
“What if I am?” He looks defiant, and suddenly terribly young, a kid who has no idea what he’s gotten himself into, but is prepared to do it anyways.  
  
And despite her anger and humiliation, she almost smiles at him as she cups his face in her hands. “Because,” she says gently, “this fixes nothing.”  
  
“And what if I don’t care,” he demands, his breath ghosting over her cheeks and nose. His eyes are sharp and intense on hers. “How much more fucked up can we get?”  
  
“Please don’t say that,” she pleads, and tears herself away. “Just leave, Gokudera,” she orders tiredly, rubbing at her head. “Go sleep it off.”  
  
His hand is hot on her arm but she shakes it off without glancing at him. “You’ve made me feel cheap enough already,” she tells him dully, and without listening to his reply, goes and locks herself in the bathroom.  
  
There’s ten minutes of Gokudera banging on the door, ordering and shouting, finally pleading for her to open up, let me in, sorry, I’m sorry, what the _fuck_ , Yamamoto, open up! She buries her face in the white towel and doesn’t make a sound.

 

 

The tile is cold and hard, the towel and the fine material of her dress completely unsuitable to spending the night on the floor of the bathroom. She shivers, drops the dress in the basket, and climbs into the shower, letting the heat and steam soak into her sore muscles.  
  
Outside, there is darkness; it’s three in the morning, and Yamamoto layers on her leather jacket over a cashmere sweater and jeans, takes her phone, and because she doesn’t want to take any chances, climbs out her window rather than walk past Gokudera’s room. She walks a loop past the long end of the manor, creeps around the east wing and finally slips into the garage. In the far corner of a line of nice luxury cars is Squalo’s bike. She finds the key in ignition, the helmet hung on a nail, and that’s all she needs to go roaring down the long mountain path of the estate, churning up gravel and dust behind.  
  
The bike is perfection, and for a glorious time, there’s nothing better than feeling the powerful machine between her thighs, the way gravity seems to drag just a little less the faster she goes. It is fucking cold in the Italian Alps, but the sharp edges of the wind clears her head and steals her breath. Her blood is pumping and she leans into the rushing air, feels the spike of dizzying and hot-prickly burn of adrenaline surge through her as she takes a twisting mountain turn at an entirely unsafe speed. She laughs, breathless as the bike growls and snarls, flashing chrome under moonlight, a perfect beast that lives up to its reputation as a Ducati Monster; it responds under her guidance, but seems barely controlled.  
  
It’s too soon when she comes squealing around a corner and finds her road blocked by six feet of pissed off Italian.  
  
Her body reacts without thought; the bike brakes lock and Yamamoto throws herself into the stop, lets the bike skid around in a perfect half-arc that throws a spray of dirt and rock right at the edge of Squalo’s black boots.  
  
He looks unimpressed, arms crossed. Yamamoto regards him silently, twisting over her shoulder, then stomps down the kickstand, and dismounts. She walks slowly to stand in front of Squalo and waits.  
  
“Take that fucking lid off your head, brat,” Squalo orders, and she shakes her head obstinately.  
  
“I could be crying,” she threatens. “I know you hate crying girls.”  
  
“Man up,” he growls and pops it off himself, tucking the helmet under his arm. Yamamoto rubs her nose and looks away. Her eyes are dry. “Sorry,” she says dully. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”  
  
His eyes burn on her skin as he regards her for a long moment, taking in her pinched, tired expression and favoring her bad leg. “Let’s go a round,” he finally says, and Yamamoto laughs bitterly, because she can hear the goddamned sympathy under that gruff bravado and just doesn’t want it.  
  
“I’m just tired,” she says with a little smile. “I’ll be okay.” Squalo nods shortly once and then drops the helmet back over her head. She adjusts it briefly, and follows him back to the bike.  
  
“If you want to steal a bike next time,” Squalo instructs as she climbs on the pillion, wrapping her arms around his waist, “take Levi’s. That bike is a piece of shit; no one will cry if you drive the tires bald and blow the pistons.”  
  
“Got it,” she replies quietly, and lays her head against his solid back.  
  
  
  
Squalo drives them back to the mansion, and then back to his room where he shoves her into his bed and climbs in after, drawing up the covers and lying flat on his back.  
  
“I don’t trust you to go off on your own right now,” he mutters when she tries to joke about his soft side, and glares at her. “Wipe the fucking smirk off your face, what the fuck do you got to smile about now?”  
  
“Thanks, Squalo, ever so much,” she replies a little bit acidly, and he just grins a flash of sharp, white teeth. “What a comforting ball of warm and fuzzies you are.”  
  
“It’s like hugging a shark,” he replies smugly. She laughs a little, and burrows against his side anyways.  
  
“Sometimes, I wish I loved you a little more,” she says, muffled against his chest.  
  
“Yeah,” he grunts, good hand a comforting weight against her scalp. “Don’t make a habit of it.”  
  
  
  
“YOU ARE ALWAYS GONNA BE MY LOVE,” Utada Hikaru wails at the top of her lungs.  
  
“FUCK,” a very masculine voice bites into the pillow besides her. Yamamoto jolts up but is weighed down by a long, sinewy arm across her stomach and flails outwards, groping blindly for her phone. There’s a moment when Squalo attempts half-heartedly to untangle from her and ends up shoving her off the bed. She crawls and finally locates the phone under the bed.  
  
“Hello,” she moans. It’s eight in the morning; she didn’t have to be up until ten.  
  
“Oh my god, Takako, are you alright?”  
  
“Haru,” Yamamoto groans and presses her face into the side of the mattress. “Please please let me call you back later.”  
  
“What? Why? It’s like, morning there, right?”  
  
“Not awake,” she mumbles back, and attempts to drag herself back up, only to have Squalo kick at her.  
  
“Get the fuck outta here if you’re gonna talk, brat,” Squalo roars into his wonderful, soft, Egyptian cotton, high-thread count sheets. Yamamoto whimpers and sadly stumbles out of his room.  
  
“Jesus,” Haru squeaks on the other end. “Did that- Who- that was Squalo, wasn’t it? Takako, you slept with Squalo? You slept with him? Again?”  
  
“Nooooooo,” Yamamoto decries blurrily, shuffling into the joint space of the Varia’s quarters. Some of the others are awake and chatting but she makes a beeline for the tray of coffee and _cornetti_ , phone pressed awkwardly to her face. “complicated. Wait. Coffee.”  
  
Someone hands her a shot of espresso and she practically breathes it in, it’s gone that fast.  
  
“Thank you,” she sighs, ungumming her eyes enough to take in the glorious sight that is Mama Lussuria in a frilly apron with pastries, then freezes.  
  
“Are you alive? Are you conscious?” Haru demands over the phone. “Because we need to talk, missy. And I mean, right away. None of this evasive shit; I had Gokudera calling me during my midterm and leaving these really disturbing drunk messages that I’m going to save on my hard drive for blackmail material, the contents of which are disturbing to me right now, but I hope I sincerely do will morph into hilarity that we will all chuckle over when we’re locked up in retirement homes. Because, they are kind of insane, and Takako? Are you listening?”  
  
“No,” Yamamoto answers truthfully, still staring unblinkingly at Gokudera, who is standing next to an arrogantly sullen Xanxus and looking back. “Can I… call you back?” She hangs up on a burst of questions and demands, and stuffs the phone into her pocket. Gokudera’s expression is utterly blank; he’s immaculately put together as always, in his favorite charcoal-gray bespoke wool suit and silk burgundy shirt, but he looks a mess. Dark circles ring his sunken eyes and he’s got the slightly pouchy face of someone who hasn’t gotten enough sleep. He’s the color of sour milk.  
The other Varia in the room are pretending to be furiously busy. It’s not like any of them have an ounce of decency when it comes to eavesdropping; they’re trying to attract the minimal amount of attention to avoid being kicked out. Yamamoto almost laughs at the thought, but faced with whatever’s in Gokudera’s expression right now, she just can’t.  
  
“Gokudera,” she swallows, but he doesn’t say anything. His lips are pressed in a loose line and his eyes flicker past her shoulder to the room she’d exited. She can’t bring herself to explain and finally, something fragile and tenuous seems to snap between them.  
  
He clears his throat, cutting off whatever she couldn’t say, and abruptly turns to leave. “Cato Mosca’s room was tossed this morning; he is missing certain files pertaining to Fiori’s estate and business. We meet with him in half an hour,” he informs her tonelessly from the doorway. The pause after his statement drags and Yamamoto can feel the grip on her espresso turn white, but Gokudera finally just leaves, whatever he could have said swallowed into the sudden insurmountable silence between.  
  
Yamamoto clutches at her cup, brain desperately trying to understand what just happened; she can’t understand why her heart’s suddenly racing. Sweat is prickling her hairline and pushing from her fingertips, and somewhere inside something heavy and leaden has solidified and sunk to the pits of her gut.  
  
“Sweetheart,” Lussuria whispers as he slinks to her side. She turns to face him, and he pats her cheek matronly. “You could go after him.”  
  
“No,” Yamamoto says, startling herself. She cocks her head to the side, considering her answer and rolls that single word across her tongue, swallows again. “No. I’m tired of chasing after him,” she concludes quietly, feeling sick. Lussuria regards at her, not unkindly, and tips a large amount of brandy into her coffee.  
  
  
  
“I need a drink to have this conversation properly,” Haru sighs from the other end.  
  
“Take one,” Yamamoto suggests glumly. “I did.” She rifles through her wardrobe and pulls out her silk Vivienne Westwood blouse, simultaneously toeing a pair of sensible black Jimmy Choos out of their boxes. Haru makes a distressed noise.  
  
“So, what, what happened?” Haru demands as Yamamoto dresses quickly. “You and Gokudera argued, you ran to Squalo and he comforted you with a night of torrid passion, only to have Gokudera stumble on you guys first thing in the morning?”  
  
“There was no torrid passion,” Yamamoto objects, zipping her black pants and threading a thin belt through. “I fell asleep in his bed. That’s all.”  
  
“God, what is this bizarre thing between the two of you,” Haru breaks off subject to ask, mystified. “Like, first it was all ‘RAWR, ENEMIES’ and then, all weird teacher-student thing, and now he’s your gay best friend?”  
  
“Don’t let him hear you say that,” Yamamoto laughs. There is an awkward silence from Haru’s end; Yamamoto finishes tucking in her shirt, checks her holster and shrugs on her jacket.  
  
“Takako,” Haru says tentatively, “You seem to be taking all this… in stride.”  
  
“No other way to do it,” she agrees with plastic cheer.  
  
“But you just broke up with your not-boyfriend of like, a decade. In a majorly bad way,” Haru objects. “Maybe you should take the day off. Better yet,” her voice brightens. “You should talk to him.”  
  
“On my way to meet him now,” Yamamoto tells her.  
  
“For work! I mean, really talk about it, no dramatics. Civilly. Sitting in chairs, preferably.”  
  
“I suppose,” Yamamoto hedges. “Studs or hoops?”  
  
“Ugh, studs. And don’t you dare change the subject, Yamamoto Takako. Aren’t you even a little concerned about this?”  
  
“Of course I am,” Yamamoto sighs, giving in, and slumps onto the bedspread, clicking off the speakerphone and pressing the phone to her ear. “Fuck,” she utters, running her hand through her hair. “I’d like nothing less than to go home to Haagen Daz and shitty chick flicks and cry, but I can’t. I have a job to do, and he’s chosen, okay?”  
  
“Chosen?” Haru echoes.  
  
Yamamoto tilts her head up and stares hard at the ceiling to rid the brief blurring of her vision, and she has to force her throat to work. “He doesn’t want me, Haru,” she pronounces with deliberate lightness. “He needs someone to do the job and back him up, and what can I say to that, Haru? What in the whole goddamn world am I supposed say to that?”  
  
“…Takako,” croaks Haru, sounding close to tears herself. Yamamoto closes her eyes and breathes out.  
  
“I have to go,” she says shortly, buttoning her suit jacket. “I’ll call you later.”  
  
  
  
Inside the conference room the Ninth has set aside, the windows are long and narrow; Yamamoto arrives early, and leans against the glass, watching the last of the charity event’s guests filter out into their luxury cars and down the drive. She spots Mr. Hagen’s Rolls Royce and makes an automatic note to send him a card when she returns home.  
  
It is such an unexpected sight that for a moment, Yamamoto doesn’t even understand what she’s looking at: a plain black sedan pulls up in front of the manse, and Yamamoto watches, stunned, as Juliette emerges and descends the steps. The Vongola doorman is actually opening the car door for her, and handing her in, carefully, as she’s holding a demure leather case of-  
  
“Diamonds,” Yamamoto ejaculates.  
  
“Pardon?” Coyote Nougat asks as he and Gokudera come through the door. She looks at them wildly, and points to the window.  
  
“She’s leaving with the diamonds that Mosca arrived with,” Yamamoto utters, watches as Gokudera’s exhausted expression struggles to hide behind a professional façade. There’s no time; Yamamoto unlatches and shoves the windows open, kicking them when they stick, and before anyone can object, hurtles over the ledge.  
  
“ _Holy shit_ ,” someone shouts faintly, but Yamamoto’s busy dropping to the second floor balcony and swinging down an old drainpipe to pay attention. As soon as her soles hit gravel, she’s sprinting, cursing herself for wearing the world’s most impractical shoes. The car is kicking up a stinging spray of rock and dust as the driver shifts into high gear, the engine roaring under its smooth black hood. There’s twenty yards between them, but the car’s gaining speed, and the adrenaline pumping through Yamamoto’s blood can only help so much. Flashes of clear images snap into focus; the way two twisted shrubs frame either side of the car as it shoots past, Juliette’s face, stark white and cold as she twists to look through the rear window. Yamamoto puts on a burst of speed, and pulls her SIG-Sauer from her holster.  
  
The world slows to sharp, bright focus as she stops, levels her gun, and pulls off three clean shots, one through the rear window and two into the left tire. Her heart is loud by steady, and she feels remarkably calm as the sedan squeals, fish tails, and limps forward on its rim. She takes her time charging up to the car, where the driver is raising a gun out the door.  
  
“Don’t think so,” she tells him laughingly, and shoots the gun out of his hand. “And Signora, please, let’s talk,” she adds brightly, swinging her gun around to point unerringly at the woman before turning to smile widely at her.  
  
“Signorina Takako,” Juliette replies, cool and calm. “I’m afraid there’s nothing to talk about.”  
  
“At least enlighten me,” Yamamoto suggests helpfully. “You killed your husband to gain his trade on diamonds. Attacked us to throw suspicion on Cato Mosca, then ran here to take Signor Mosca’s diamonds that he’d taken after he found his brother dead, isn’t that right? You told us you’d returned at four, but the police report indicates they were dead by two.” She cocks her head. “It’s mighty complicated for such business.”  
  
“Has it occurred to you, Signorina that nothing is ever not?” Juliette sounds like she’s attacking a philosophical theorem over tea. “Felice would never have gotten into the business if not for his brother. He never would have succeeded without me.” Yamamoto feels more than sees Gokudera pull up besides her; Juliette’s eyes flicker to the Vongola men drawing up, but comes back to regard Yamamoto calmly. “My brother died last spring; I’ve been operating for him since he was bedridden two years ago. That means I am the one talking to contacts in France, I am the one seeing these diamonds cleaned, I am the one negotiating prices.” Her eyes glint as she sweeps her gaze over the Mafiosi assembled. “But what did it matter to my husband that I was running his business while he wined and dined and talked his game? Felice didn’t care that I was performing a role in the operations; he didn’t want to see that I was a contributor. I made a difference. He barely acknowledged me, so all I am doing is taking my share, Signorina. I’m taking my forty-years worth of share.”  
  
“Signora,” Yamamoto trails off as Juliette levels a haughty, bitter smile at her.  
  
“I don’t care about the money, Signorina,” Juliette laughs, proves this by upending the leather case in her hands. Diamonds explode and scatter over the ground. She doesn’t so much as glance at them, glittering against the gravel, over fifty million euros embedded into the Vongola driveway. “There is always more to be made.”  
  
“Then what,” Cato Mosca bites out, his tone acid and sharp. He steps forward, his Beretta leveled unflinchingly at her eyelevel.  
  
Juliette smiles at him. “A name,” she says simply.  
  
Gokudera quietly pulls Yamamoto back and lowers his gun. She half turns to accommodate him, tucks away her SIG Sauer, though motions for the rest of the Vongola to keep their weapons up.  
  
“Signora,” Gokudera speaks, “You are raising a claim on all of Felice’s affairs, then?”  
  
Juliette regards him levelly. “Of course I am,” she replies clearly. “It’s why he’s dead.”  
  
“And the matter of the will?” Gokudera continues, sharp, irritated, and professional. “Signor Mosca holds his share as beneficiary.”  
  
Juliette laughs. “Signor Gokudera, I am returning to my family, do you understand? Why should they care for a dead man’s preference for his bastard brother, when they could work with a daughter of their own?”  
  
“Famiglia business is thicker than blood,” he replies levelly. “Perhaps you should reconsider.”  
  
And that is when Mr. Mortenson steps into the scene, hands loose behind his back.  
  
“Juliette,” he greets, with just a touch of sarcasm.  
  
The older woman draws herself up, and her expression hardens into itself. “Vitya.”  
  
“You have just made my business a far more complex one,” Mr. Mortenson laughs, and Yamamoto shivers, remembers the ink-black lines hidden under bleached cuffs. His skull face holds a pleasant enough expression, but there’s no denying that his pale eyes are nothing but deadly serious. Besides him, Cato Mosca pales as he turns to stare at his companion warily. To her credit, Juliette remains unfazed.  
  
“Believe me,” she says with mock sincerity, “That troubles me greatly.”  
  
Mr. Mortenson just smiles a little, secret smile and considers her. “Let’s not be coy,” he dismisses. “Why should your concern lay with mine, after all? Your brothers—Jean and Barthelémy have had little enough to say against me, but you are not them, after all. Your business has nothing to do with theirs, is that so?”  
  
“If you are concerned for your stake in the profits, Vitya,” Juliette cuts him off coldly, “Rest assured; I honor the contracts.” He smiles enigmatically, and stays silent even as Mosca makes a sound of betrayal and frustration.  
  
“And what about me, Signora?” the man spits, eyes glittering in barely constrained fury. “I will never consent to work with you unless you are dead.”  
  
The driveway is now filled with Mafiosi, watching silently. From the back of the crowd, the Ninth is slowly making his way through his guests and famiglia, leading a steady rippling movement that opens a narrow path between the crowd. The old man stops only when he is standing shoulder to shoulder with Yamamoto, and glances at her briefly before turning his attention back to the scene. Juliette and Cato Mosca are respectfully silent, though the tension in the air has only ratcheted up.  
  
The Ninth clears his throat and leans forward on his cane. “Signora Fiori,” he begins cordially. “So, it was you, who tried to murder my two people.”  
  
“Yes,” she replies simply. “Though murder was not my intent. I only wished to frighten and mislead,” she explains, a dry glint in her eye. Yamamoto decides she really dislikes Juliette’s sense of humor.  
  
“Nevertheless,” the Ninth barks sharply, all neutrality gone from his tone. “You endangered my men. You threw our accord, not to mention the business dealings of other _famiglie_ , many who are represented here today. You killed your husband and his partner, and planned to usurp his fortune. You burglarized the rooms of my guest. What is to say Signor Mosca here should not avenge his brother immediately?”  
  
And Juliette just smiles, wide and benevolent. “And how are any of you worthy of being my judge?” she laughs. “Your hands, _monsieur_ , are a hundred shades darker than mine. My husband was no innocent either, and neither is his brother. And as Monsieur Mortenson has said, I am not one of your world, though I have run its affairs far better than some who are. Shall you cast the first stone, _Vongola_?”  
  
Yamamoto can’t take her eyes from the woman, so pale and fragile and resilient among a sea of black grim intent. Juliette is immaculate, even now, at this ugly unmasking; her head is high, and her limbs are loose. Her expression is triumphant, in spite of everything, and Yamamoto admires her, suddenly and fiercely, and not in the superficial way she had before, of Juliette’s proper primness, her poise and utter unflappable cool. Now, she seems to radiate a tower of confidence and steel determination; she’s finally caught the ears of every man she has ever wanted to have listen to her, and it is burning the oil of her patience into stunning, passionate presence.  
  
The Ninth appears sorrowful, but unmoved. “Signora,” he says, “We are men of the Mafia, and our stones fall like landslides, no matter how black our hands. It will be no more a streak upon our conscience than the hundreds of innocents before you.”  
  
“Then kill me, you cowards,” Juliette laughs, a breathless, giddy sound that breaks like crystals over the silent crowd, and she doesn’t sound upset, but strangely joyous and vengeful. “If you fear what I could mean, do it now before I realize it.”  
  
Juliette, Yamamoto thinks, is doomed. She has never looked more beautiful than she has now, facing down Cato Mosca’s Beretta.  
  
“I only care that you killed my brother, bitch,” Cato spits coldly, and the epithet is a sting to Yamamoto’s ears, but Juliette doesn’t even flinch, just levels her calm, steady blue gaze on him.  
  
“Such a shame,” she tells him pityingly. “You would have found in me a far greater man than he ever was.”  
  
The sound of the gunshot cracks the air and Yamamoto neither flinches nor closes her eyes, and though her ears and pulse ring with the lingering echoes of the shot, she is witness to Mr. Mortenson flinging himself against Juliette, slamming the both of them against the solid body of the car, and more importantly, out of the way of the bullet.  
  
Chancing a look at Cato Mosca, he looks stunned. His finger is off the trigger, but he’s frozen. Yamamoto doesn’t know if it’s because he actually pulled the trigger, or that she’s not dead. Besides her, Gokudera takes a slow, deep breath, like the final piece of his plan is falling into place. The thought that he might even have one without letting her know is enough to make her resolutely ignore him, watching instead Mr. Mortenson gingerly helping Juliette to her feet. The French woman’s spell is broken; she suddenly looks very much the slight, shocky figure of someone who narrowly avoided death when they hadn’t expected to.  
  
“Viktor,” Cato murmurs hoarsely, “You can’t be…”  
  
Mr. Mortenson smiles sparingly at him. “Sincerest regrets, Ciambino,” he drawls. “My condolences, truly, on your brother’s death,” he tells Cato in the faint, disparaging way that makes most men hate him, brushing his lapels off-handedly and adjusting the cuffs of his sleeves to hide the inky black stripes on his skin. Cato stares at him silently. “I’ve decided on behalf of my ah, clients,” he announces, “That Madame Benoit-Corbone is now under our protection, for her valuable insight to a certain branch of our interests that we have significant reason to doubt anyone else has.”  
  
“We are your clients,” Cato shouts, voice cracking in rage.  
  
Mr. Mortenson levels a finger at him. “But not my only one,” he informs him mildly.  
  
“I don’t need your help,” Juliette spits.  
  
“Madame,” Mr. Mortenson assures her, “you are an intelligent woman, and I have the highest respect for you, after today. Let me play your prince at this moment, so you may reign as king some other day.”  
  
Yamamoto holds her breath as Juliette straightens and gives him a long, narrow look. Eventually, she nods jerkily, and a thin-lipped, brief smile stretches across that skull-faced man.  
  
“Vongola, you and your men have witnessed my word. Does it stand?” Mr. Mortenson looks like he won’t give a shit about what the Vongola think anyways, but is humoring, or perhaps mocking, the formalities. On a small nod from the Ninth, Gokudera steps forward, stiffly.  
  
“It stands,” he agrees, carefully avoiding Yamamoto and Mosca’s eyes. “Let it be understood that safe passage is granted on the grounds of Vongola.”  
  
There is a murmured reaction from the crowd, but his next words silence them. “Let it also be understood,” he continues, his tone of voice turning icy. “That beyond the hour, Vongola shall have no more to do with Viktor Mortenson, currently of East London’s High Wind clan, nor with Juliette Benoit-Corbone. From beyond the hour, any contact initiated will be declared hostile. Any runs through our territories an act of war. We are done with this business,” he finishes shortly, and steps back in line.  
  
Mr. Mortenson inclines his head cordially, like he’d expected this all along, and with his hand on the small of her back, escorts Juliette into a waiting car at the edges of the crowd. The last time Yamamoto will ever see her, she will have strands of ash blonde hair trailing from her chignon, and her dress will be smudged with dust. She will still be unarguably the most beautiful she has ever been.  
  
  
  
Cato Mosca waits for Mr. Mortenson’s car to disappear behind the gates before walking stiffly to the Vongola, and the expression on his face is a blank mask holding back fury and foiled vengeance. He manages to keep a civil tone, but everyone can hear the catches of grief and frustration that jerk the syllables from his throat.  
  
“Permit me this impoliteness, Vongola,” he manages, and her heart goes to him, because whatever he was Felice Fiori was his family, and it is difficult to be gracious to have the closest chance for revenge driven away by politics. “Does your safe passage extend beyond your gates, even within the hour?”  
  
“No,” Gokudera answers, his expression hard but stoic. Cato Mosca’s dark eyes flicker to him, and back to the Ninth. The old man inclines his head silently. Cato Mosca, his throat working silently, turns on his heel and walks calmly away, drawing away from the silent onlookers alone. His gun is clenched in his hand, like he never intends to drop it before she is well and truly dead, and he doesn’t even bother to glance at his diamonds glittering in the gravel. Gokudera watches him with something unreadable in his expression before striding off after him. They meet at the very edges of the driveway; she sees him take Mosca’s arm lightly and bend forward to say something.  
  
Out of the corner of her eyes, Yamamoto sees the rest of the Ciambino representatives peel away noiselessly to leave. Besides her, the Ninth breathes out a long, low sigh, and automatically, Yamamoto holsters her gun, and takes his arm.  
  
“Shall I walk you back, Ninth?” she suggests, and he manages a soft huff of assent.  
  
“What do you think, Yamamoto?” Timoteo asks as they slowly make their way up the gravel path, Yamamoto’s stiletto heels sinking and scraping with each step.  
  
“I’m thinking you have the most expensive driveway in the known world,” she jests lightly, even though she knows Gokudera is already directing a careful scrutiny and cleanup of that patch of road. The old man’s chuckle is gratifying though.  
  
“I think,” he says heavily, “we men may find our lives difficult and complicated, but we still have far more to go before we touch upon the suffering of women.”  
  
Hesitating, because Yamamoto isn’t sure how she is supposed to take it, she finally gives his arm a gentle squeeze.  
  
“We are not all Juliette,” she says. “But I think we have all felt like her sometimes.”  
  
He clasps a hand over hers, the skin papery dry and warm. “Tsuna is lucky then,” he tells her with a smile. “He has you, as well as Chrome within his circle, so that you may serve to remind him of the gentler sex.” He pauses, crooking his head at her. “Or, not gentler. Underestimated, perhaps.”  
  
“Hah,” Yamamoto chuckles. “Sometimes, it comes to our advantage. Good afternoon, Ninth.” She leans over to kiss his cheek, and parts ways with him in the foyer.  
  
  
  
The rest of the week is spent dissolving their relations with the High Wind mob, and cleaning up the Fiori affair. By now, word of Juliette’s crime has hit mainstream notice, and the newspapers have taken to dredging up sensational tales of old French Connection crimes, speculating how far in accordance the legendary gang was still operating, how connected they were to the Mafia famiglie. Quietly, the Vongola retreats behind their fragile shell of venerable old-timer status, instead stressing the charity money they had raised during their annual event. During this time, Yamamoto studiously avoids Gokudera, which turns out to be pretty easy, because he is doing the same to her. They still meet in the mornings to go over the final reports for Tsuna and the Vongola historian, but the sessions are always cool to the touch and formal; nothing more than simple meaningful work. Gokudera hasn’t looked her in the eye since that morning in the Varia quarters.  
  
In some ways, Yamamoto can see how this is the right way to go—they are efficient together, as always. They still work together well; it’s too many years of partnership that has them anticipating and adjusting for each other, even when they are barely capable of exchanging civilities.  
  
But the long run is, well, a long ways off, and in the present, Yamamoto feels like she’s walking the grounds with her chest splintered into millions of sharp mirror fragments. Which, she thinks, is ridiculous because there was no relationship to speak of. There was nothing there to break up, only a decisive reaffirmation of her unrequited love. The feeling shouldn’t be anything new, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less.  
  
And Gokudera has taken the end of whatever they had as reason to ignore the past decade of friendship. Yamamoto suddenly has a broken heart, and no best friend.  
  
“I’ll talk to him,” Bianchi quietly suggests, her eyes gray with worry.  
  
“It’s fine,” Yamamoto laughs, waving off her offer. The words taste like ash on her tongue, bitter and stale and choking. She smiles. “There’s nothing to worry about.”  
  
Bianchi frowns, and only watches her silently as Yamamoto folds another shirt and tucks it into her duffel. There is an uneasy quiet while Yamamoto packs and Bianchi waits.  
  
“You can’t say you didn’t expect it, though, can’t you?” Yamamoto blurts out, finally unable to keep it in. She turns to Bianchi, her eyes quietly desperate. “I mean, there never was any hope for me anyhow, Gokudera was always going to choose the family over everything else.”  
  
The older woman sighs. “I knew it wasn’t going to be easy for the two of you, but I hoped Gokudera would have learned something over the years.”  
  
“What? To love others?” Yamamoto laughs, a touch bitterly.  
  
“I think,” his sister says carefully, “it’s himself that he hasn’t learned to love, not yet.”  
  
It’s nothing that makes Yamamoto feel any better. Looking contrite, Bianchi reaches over then and places her hand over Yamamoto’s.  
  
“Takako,” she says, unusually fervent, “Please, have hope for my brother.”  
  
“So that he may love me?” Yamamoto asks dully.  
  
“I can’t say yes without sounding selfish,” Bianchi admits, and her smile is touched with bitterness. “So all I will ask is that you have hope.”  
  
Have hope. Like it’s something difficult to do; Yamamoto’s had hope for the past decade, and if she said she’d lost it by now, it would only be a lie. Hope is all she’s ever had, her constant companion through the years at Gokudera’s side. And, it seems, hope is all she ever will.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I love feedback, and constructive criticism is always welcome.


End file.
